The Wizard and the War Machine, page 11
"Probably all they speak—all they spoke—was their own dialect. It's descended from Anglo-Spanish, but it's got added dipthongs and dropped consonants—"
"I don't care what it is, Slant—it's not anything I know and it's not anything the computer could interpret, and if these people were loyal they'd speak something we could understand."
"That's ridiculous!" A thought struck him. "If you couldn't speak to them," he asked, "how did you get them to surrender so you could herd them into the building you burned?"
"Oh, that was easy," Flame said. "I used sign language. A snark isn't very impressive, since it doesn't make any noise or flash, so to get their attention I shouted at them until they all came out into the streets to see what the fuss was, and then I cut someone in half." She laughed again. "That scared the crap out of the little bastards; all I had to do after that was wave and point, and they went where I told them."
Turner choked back vomit. He knew what a snark could do, and his imagination conjured up the scene all too clearly. "Oh, God," he said.
He found himself unable to stop thinking of the old schoolyard joke that he had heard as a boy: What's worse than finding a worm in an apple you just bit? Finding half a worm in an apple you just bit.
He forced down an urge to laugh hysterically, like Flame, and told himself that he was being foolish. He had seen plenty of gruesome things in his time and had no excuse for letting a mere description upset him. His stay on Dest had weakened him, softened him up.
But then, he had never expected to need to be strong and hard again. He was a husband and father, a wizard, not a warrior.
And now, whether he liked it or not, he was Dest's protector. He did not yet know whether he would be called upon to be a warrior once again, but his role certainly called upon him to face reality and to make what decisions had to be made. He could not afford any illusions about Flame. He was facing an utterly ruthless opponent.
He might have to be equally ruthless to save the planet.
As he was recovering his composure, Flame demanded, "Where are you, anyway? How did you know about the village?"
Turner didn't bother answering. It seemed pointless. Talking to Flame at present was useless, he saw that plainly. She was simply beyond reason.
At least, this personality was. She presumably had seventeen others.
If they were similar to the ones he had had, several of them would appear only in specialized circumstances and would be incapable of reasoning about anything outside their own specialties. Others, though, would be more complete, and somewhere in the fragments of Flame's original mind a sane personality might still linger. If it ever came out, Turner might be able to settle things peacefully—but that seemed unlikely. This personality did not seem inclined to give way, and Dest, with its relatively primitive technology and social structure, was not likely to provide a situation where a cover personality was called for. Most of the nontechnical personalities were intended to be used as deceptions in dealing with complex societies; at least one existed only in order to be ignorant under torture. Flame's attitude toward Dest's society made such subtleties unnecessary.
Besides, even if a friendly personality did come to the fore, Turner would have no way to keep her from switching identities again, and sooner or later this paranoid killer would almost certainly reemerge, particularly if, as he believed, it was the default persona.
He had no idea what to do. It was easy to tell himself that he had to be ruthless, but what could he do? If he found Flame and killed her, her ship would retaliate by nuking cities.
"Hey, computer, I want to talk to you privately," Flame said, breaking into his thoughts. "I've got—" The rest was cut off as the computer stopped relaying to Turner, leaving him listening to dead air.
He cursed, and unslung the rocket rifle and held it ready, the barrel gleaming dully in the glow of the burning village. Cutting off their communications channel was clearly a threatening move. Flame was somewhere nearby, he knew, and she might well be coming after him, intending to kill him. Her private business with the computer might have been to ask it to tell her exactly where he was.
If she came after him in her combat persona, only fantastic luck would keep him alive, and that luck would need all the help he could provide, such as having his weapon out and ready. He was faster and stronger than any normal human, the equal of any of Flame's other selves in a fight, but even so, an IRU combat personality would completely outclass him. The combat persona was more efficient than any of the nonspecialized selves. Since its decisions were limited to such basic choices as whether to fight or flee and what weapon was closest at hand, it was able to operate much more quickly than a fully conscious person, even a person with spliced neurons. It was also able to completely ignore pain and automatically kept adrenaline pumping at full force whenever it moved, so that it did not tire. An IRU cyborg with the combat personality dominant was really more a machine than a person, with a machine's unthinking efficiency.
Convincing the combat persona to take over without a direct and obvious threat, however, was not always easy, and it might not agree with the default personality about which target to attack, so that she would probably have to come looking for him as herself—if that mad killer could be considered anybody's true self. The two cyborgs would then be on roughly even terms until Turner did something that threatened Flame sufficiently to bring out her combat self.
If it came to a fight, he would have to kill her as quickly as possible, with a single shot, before the combat personality could take over.
And if it came to that, what would her ship do?
He could have little doubt of that. It would assume that Turner had lied, that Dest was enemy-held, and it would then set out to destroy as much of the planet as possible, firing every weapon it had—including the missiles it had salvaged from his own wrecked ship—before finally destroying itself, preferably by crashing into a final target with the fusion drive overheated to the point of explosion.
That was what the standard programming called for in the event of the cyborg's death on an enemy planet; he remembered that clearly.
That meant that he did not dare kill Flame, even if he could; it would mean the end of the world, the destruction of Dest, of his family, and of himself.
He knew that, but he kept the rocket rifle ready. The sight of it might deter her somewhat.
If she died in some other way, by accident or with her head blown off by the computer, but not killed by an inhabitant of Dest, his problems might well be over, since that would make him the computer's only available ally. He thought he would be able to convince the computer that Dest was friendly easily enough once Flame was no longer around to argue with him. That was something worth considering; if he could somehow kill her so that the computer accepted her death as an accident, Dest would be safe.
Better still would be if he could somehow convince the computer itself to kill her. If he could convince it that Dest was friendly and that Flame knew that, then that would, to the computer's way of thinking, prove that Flame was a traitor. It would probably respond by detonating the thermite charge in the base of her skull.
That would solve the problem, certainly, but killing her would be a shame in a way; Dest might have uses for another cyborg. If she were not a dangerous lunatic, her death would not be necessary.
That started him wondering—were all her personalities deranged? If he had, as he thought, been dealing exclusively with her default personality so far, and if that had been the dominant personality during her entire time in space, the isolation had probably been what had driven her insane. Her other personalities, having been suppressed all that time, might not have suffered. Was there some way he could bring a different one to the fore, to see?
He sensed movement off to his left, something other than the flicker of firelight, and with superhuman, unthinking speed, the cyborg speed that he had believed lost and forgotten, he rolled to the side, bringing his rifle to bear on what he had glimpsed. A soft clatter sounded, barely audible over the fire's crackling roar.
Something had fallen; somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind that sound touched on a simple ruse that his combat personality had been taught back on Mars so long ago. He spun around on one hip, boots scraping up pine needles, as he reached out desperately with his psychic senses.
Chapter Twelve
FLAME HAD AT LEAST ONE SNARK, HE KNEW; SHE had used it to cut an innocent villager in half. No other weapons had been mentioned though she might have some. He had to be ready for anything but could take as a working hypothesis that Flame preferred to use her snark.
A snark broke down molecular bonds, reducing almost any solid matter to dust and loose ions. It was absolutely silent. It was also extremely limited in range, due to interference from the atmosphere. Flame had made something fall off to one side, probably while she was on his opposite side, perhaps by throwing whatever it was over his head, perhaps to get him to look the wrong way while she came close enough to use the snark on him.
Of course, she might have other weapons as well as the snark, and the pebble, or whatever it was, might have had another purpose entirely. He simply didn't know.
He fired his rifle out into the forest, away from the village, a single warning shot aimed high.
The rocket-shell whistled away, burning a yellow trail through the cold darkness, scattering pine needles and twigs as it passed through a tree top. He hoped the warning would delay her for the instant he needed to draw his breath.
"I know you're there, Flame!" he shouted. "Listen, you don't want to kill me yet—I know too much about this planet that you don't! I know what the gravitational anomalies are!"
His voice was lost in the trees, unanswered. A long second later a distant report and a flicker of light told him that the rocket-shell had spent its fuel, fallen to the ground, and detonated on impact.
Physically, he saw nothing but the forest lit by the glow of the burning village. The sky was a solid blackness overhead, the stars hidden behind heavy clouds. He heard nothing but the crackling of the flames and the night breeze hissing through the pines.
His psychic awareness, however, was another matter. His every wizardry sense was alert, and he knew where Flame was. She was crouched a dozen meters away, behind a conjoined pair of trees. She was listening intently and watching him closely. He guessed that she was probably out of snark range—after her work on the village her snark would be low on charge. Even if she had brought two or three snarks, none were likely to be at full power if she had had to confine a hundred people in a burning building.
She might have other weapons, but he could not sense any. If she did have others, she was not using them. She was not attacking; she was waiting.
"Computer," he said. "Don't let her kill me. Not yet. You understand? Don't let her kill me!"
He waited for what seemed an eternity before the computer replied. "Affirmative."
That was what he had wanted to hear, but somehow it was not as reassuring as he had hoped it would be. He was still terrified.
"Flame," he called aloud. "Listen, you don't want to kill me. I'm what you came here to rescue, remember? I'm an IRU cyborg, the same as you—or I was, anyway. I'm decommissioned now, but even decommissioned, I'm still a Terran citizen, and you don't have the authority to kill me without a trial unless I do something that endangers you or your ship. I'm not doing anything like that. If you kill me, it's murder—and that's aiding and abetting the enemy. You know what your computer will do if you do that; that's what the thermite in your head is for. Neither of us wants to die. Let's talk this over."
"Me, aiding and abetting!" Her voice was higher than he had expected, and harsh. "You're the traitor, helping the enemy by preventing me from destroying everything! That's grounds for killing you, isn't it?" Switching to subvocalization, she repeated, "Isn't it?"
"Affirmative," the computer answered.
"But only if Dest is enemy-held! You haven't got any evidence of that!" Turner shouted.
"We don't need any evidence!" Flame insisted. "Old Earth's gone!"
Turner called desperately, "But these people don't even know that!" Except, he could not help adding to himself, for a few dozen he or his friends had told.
Frustrated at her inability to come up with an answer to that, Flame stepped out from behind the paired trees and fired the snark.
Turner glimpsed her, a shadow moving against the darkness beyond, and sensed the spray of disruptive energy. Instantly he dove for cover, ducking behind a young pine for what little protection it might provide. He saw powdered wood sparkle like gold dust in the firelight as a tree caught by the beam began to disintegrate. The trunk creaked and started to buckle.
The weapon could not reach him. He saw immediately that he was well beyond the snark's limited range. His dodging would have done no good otherwise, since even with the normal delays clipped out of his nervous system, with augmented muscles, with bones reinforced so that his increased speed and strength would not snap them, he could hardly have avoided a beam that moved at the speed of light.
"Computer, stop her! Override!" he demanded. "She's trying to kill me, and that's murder!"
"Affirmative," the computer replied as the damaged tree slowly leaned over and fell, loudly tearing its way through the branches of its neighbors.
Beyond the toppled pine Flame suddenly jerked spastically. Even in the gloom, Turner could see her motion clearly. The snark fell from her hand as her fingers twitched uncontrollably. "No!" she shouted. "Goddammit, you stupid machine, don't duh-duh-duh—" Her jaw locked.
The computer, Turner knew from bitter personal experience, was attempting to override her brain's control of her body. If she had been hooked up to a control cable on her ship, the computer could have taken over smoothly, completely, instantly, but at this long range she was able to put up a real fight; the ship's signal could not be much stronger than her brain's natural electrical output.
Her head turned toward him—the fire's glow was spreading, and he realized he could see her with his eyes as well as his mind and not just as a shadow. She was short, heavy-bodied, wearing a worker's one-piece jumpsuit; pale tangled hair, red in the firelight but probably blond by day, trailed down her back. The heat had not reached her, and her breath puffed from her mouth unevenly, visible as a pale golden mist. The hand that had held the snark was open and clutching, and she was bending down toward the fallen weapon, moving in small jerks like a broken machine.
She was reaching for the snark. She was winning her battle for control of her own body.
He could not allow that.
"Computer," he called. "Can you induce a switch to a different personality? One of her cover identities?"
"Information insufficient," the computer replied. "Transition is regulated by conditioning of cyborg unit, not by computer control. However, application of appropriate internal stimuli may trigger transition."
"Try!" He held the rocket rifle pointed at her. "If she picks up that snark, I'll have to kill her in self-defense. I don't want to do that." Even in his desperation, he wanted to make a point. "I am loyal, or I'd kill her now—you see that, don't you?"
"Affirmative."
He knew he did not dare to actually kill her. If he did, the computer was likely to retaliate, whatever the exact circumstances. He was suddenly very unsure indeed that he could convince the computer that Dest was friendly if Flame died.
Her hand was on the snark, but her fingers would not close. She was staring at him, her entire body tensed.
"Then if she tries to kill me, it's murder, it's treason—you'll have to blow her head off. And that would mean she was wrong about this planet, it is loyal."
Her fingers were trembling, trying to close on the plastic grip.
"Information insufficient. Possibility of disloyalty of cyborg unit designated 'Slant' remains. Reasons other than loyalty to the Command may prevent destruction of cyborg unit designated 'Flame.' "
He had not wanted the computer to figure that out. He aimed the rifle. "I'll shoot if I have to."
Then, suddenly, Flame relaxed. Her entire body lost its tension. The transition was so abrupt and complete that Turner lowered his own weapon slightly in startled response.
Moving casually, she stooped, picked up the snark, glanced at it, then looked back at Turner. He did not fire; he knew that he was no longer facing the same person. Her broad face was calm; she reached up and brushed back her hair with her free hand.
"Zdrastvuytye," she said in Russian, her voice almost an octave lower than before. "Do I know you?"
Turner hesitated, keeping the rocket rifle ready; he was unsure what to tell her or even what language to use. She appeared to have completely abandoned the idea of killing him, but he knew better than to trust an IRU cyborg. Even if the current personality was sincerely friendly—which was not yet established—another personality might take over at any moment.
Flame studied him for a moment as he groped unsuccessfully for words. "Oh, of course I know you," she said, still speaking Russian. "Foolish of me. Forgive me; my head was only seeded sparingly. You're Slant." Even in the dim light, Turner could see the puzzled expression that crossed her face. "I was trying to kill you, against orders, wasn't I?"
Turner had to struggle to follow this; he had not heard Russian spoken for over twenty years of subjective time. "Do you speak anything besides Russian?" he asked in polyglot.
"No," she replied thoughtfully, still in Russian. "Only the Russian language. My native tongue." Puzzlement crossed her face again. "But I can understand you. I remember what my other self learned, regardless of what language was spoken. That seems strange."
"Not really," Turner said conversationally, trying to keep the mood light. "If you're a cover personality, it might have been done intentionally to keep you from slipping up if you claim to only know Russian. You could still listen to anything but couldn't speak anything you aren't supposed to know." He added silently, "Is that it, computer?"
