Electric Forest, page 14
Somehow, Magdala had lost her. Already lost. Magdala saw her run to the car, throw in the mechanical thing, step in after it. Magdala saw the side of the car shut, and heard the motor roar.
Christophine’s car sped up the metal road into the forest.
Magdala stood alone but not surprised. Empty, of course.
Each time the lull came, she heard Claudio make the wooden noise. She understood he was attempting to drag himself along the rock slope, back into the cave.
Across the sea, there came a pang of thunder.
Empty.
Empty.
IV
AFTER SOME WHILE, perhaps three-quarters of an hour, Magdala began to walk along the slope toward the cave, following Claudio. She felt a leaden curiosity as to what had become of him. Reiterating ceaselessly that ghastly wooden grunt of pain, he had gradually hauled himself into the cave, out of sight. And the cave, distance, the sea, had extinguished any further sounds he might or might not have made.
The cave smelled stagnant, smelled of blackness. Though deep in the pit of it a sour light soaked through the black, which was the faint glow of a car headlamp. Claudio’s car lay in the cave, a sea beast, a large silver fish, stranded by a great penetrating retreating wave. Entering, she could only discern the face of it, with no sign of Claudio there, but the left-hand side sections of the car, back and front, were raised. As she went forward and drew level with them, she beheld Claudio, silent now, and slumped across the front seat. His head hung from his neck rather as the broken hand hung from his wrist, as if his neck were broken, too. But he glanced up at her.
“Just a minute,” he said tonelessly. “Not that I don’t think you should see what she did. Yes, I think you deserve that. But not quite yet.”
She halted, gazing at him wildly. It was not that she had forgotten Christophine’s theft from the car, the plaque of dead lights under her arm. But all that Christophine meant to Magdala now had been reduced to a cleaving in twain: the emptiness.
“You gulped down the story that she wanted Hovak’s simulate voice tape,” he said. “Didn’t you realize that what she took from here wasn’t anything like that? I’ll tell you what it was. It was a panel ripped out of the side of a maintenance capsule. That’s just the very thing she was desperate to get. The panel carries the energy charge during Transfer—you remember? Never mind. Like any good piece of mechanics, the panel has a data bank. All she need do now is plug it into the computer at Two Unit and the computer will analyze the data. In about ten hours, she’ll have the answer to C.T. She’ll be able to transfer the consciousness of any man or woman she chooses into any simulate body she chooses, with a success rate of ninety-nine point nine percent.”
Claudio eased his position slightly, lolling his head lethargically to let it rest against the seat.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I can’t decide if it’s better to explain first, or let you see first, then explain. Whatever I do, there isn’t much time to do it in.”
Outside, the thunder split the night. An antiseptic lightning smacked against the sea.
“Damn you,” she murmured. “Do you think I’ll always comply with everything you say?”
He yawned, and then to her horror, he started to cry.
The tears spilled out under his lashes in two narrow streams. He did not seem aware of them, but they filled her with an impulse to violence. Desperately, she flung herself around the car to the rear.
The entire chassis-storage, three compartments in all, had been opened and withdrawn. Her maintenance capsule was the first thing before her and she almost fell over it. Her hands on the glazium, she stared at the monster inside, wrapped in its cocoon. Nothing appeared to be wrong. Then she noticed that the wires leading into the drip-feed were not whole, but, having been broken, had been resealed on the breaks. Nor was her foot unbalanced by an uneven pebble. She moved her foot and looked down and saw a plastic syringe containing a third its length of greenish fluid.
She must have made a sound. She heard him call her name from inside the car.
“It’s all right,” he said to her. “It’s toxic, but it didn’t get very far into your system before I closed the drip. It was a botched job, for Christophine. But, of course, she had other things on her mind.”
Magdala was bowed over the glazium capsule, clutching it, supported by it. She recollected the swirl of giddiness and nausea. Christophine. Christophine had intended to kill her after all.
And then she felt the panel set in the side of her capsule, whole and attached beneath her palm. And then she lifted her eyes and looked across at the right hand storage area, pulled with the rest of the compartments onto the floor of the cave.
“Claudio,” she said, “Claudio, Claudio, Claudio.”
He said: “You’ve seen. Now come here.”
“Claudio,” she said. She wanted to laugh, but no laugh was available. Instead, she found she was crying, too, and blinkered now by tears instead of desperation, she obeyed him.
His own display of grief or pain or weakness was ended. He had maneuvered himself again, along the seat, providing room for her to crawl into the car beside him.
“Isn’t it fantastic,” he said. “We can cry. Don’t you think that’s fantastic, Magdala? Like real people. In the beginning, I never knew it could happen. But Magdala, cry sotto voce. Listen to me. I’ve got about five minutes, that’s all.”
* * *
• • •
Her tears were dry. She sat beside him, her eyes fixed on him, her ears listening. The world had shrunk to fit into her eyes, her ears. Outside, chaos roiled.
Lightning was striking the forest, repeatedly. A thousand colors reflected on the breakers of the sea, the black wall of the night, poured over into the cave, the car. Yellow, lilac, carmine; purple, turquoise, green. The shades of antique golden coins, of blue fish scales, of dusks, of dawns, of fires and alcohols, stained glass, flowers and blood.
“I don’t know what Christophine told you,” he had said, “but you’re going to hear the truth now. And this version has the advantage of already having been proven to you, by the second maintenance capsule you discovered. The capsule that belongs to me.
“Once upon a time, three years ago, when I was controller of the C. T. Project on Marine Bleu, the beautiful Christophine was assigned as my sub. I have no doubt she hated that, but she was clever enough not to show me how much. What she did show me was her order-built bungalow and the way into her bed. We were near to cracking C.T. That is a fact. Near enough to be excited and to have made provision. The first two guinea pigs for Transfer were going to be Christophine and myself, and to that end the genetic blueprints of both our physical structures had been prepared. Then one night Christophine suggested an extra angle to me. I doubt you’re au fait with planetary politics, Magdala, but the position is roughly this. Earth Conclave comprises fifty colonized worlds. Outside the Conclave there are around a hundred planets that have broken with Earth and formed their own Federations. There is already a trade war, and what comes next is anybody’s guess. The situation is on ice, but a single advantage in any field could swing the balance. C.T. is obviously a medical advantage. But it has a far more interesting viability in the area of espionage. An illustration—a key figure in a trade delegation can be eliminated and replaced by a simulate. The simulate will be indistinguishable from the original. Even prints and voice, the two things that surgery can never fake, would be exact. And inside this simulate is the transferred consciousness of a hand-picked saboteur. With an E.C. research unit within an ace of cracking C.T., the Out-Conclave Federations were getting restive. Accordingly, the rat named Hovak had made a contact with Christophine, and introduced to her the enthralling notion of selling C.T. to the highest bidder, with Hovak himself as well-paid go-between. Wonder why Christa brought this juicy snippet to me? Because she had to. Because if anyone made the breakthrough on C.T., I was going to be the one—not Christa, though I’ll swear that isn’t her story.
“I made the breakthrough three nights later. I was alone at the Unit. It was a random series, punched up on the computer console. The answer came back in sixty seconds. It was that uncomplex. Too uncomplex.
“There isn’t time to tell you what went on in my head, Magda. Maybe when they split the atom, they had a taste of it. Patently not enough of a taste. But for me—the implications, Magda, the misuse, the bloody evil that could be devised. Not only the usual spy network filth. Individuals buying their way in on it, setting it up for private mayhem—I could be right or wrong. I was God in that lab, Magda. For ten whole minutes I was God. Then I acted God, and I overrode the analysis system on the computer and erased the data. Five months’ worth of work, the sonograms, the random series. The answer. Gone.
“And then Christophine walked in.
“There was screaming written all over her face, but no scream came out. She’d had a premonition of what I might do. Just too late. It wasn’t that she needed the cash. It was the power she needed. She wants to rule the galaxy, Magda. I think I mean that literally. She wants us all to run on rails, with her fingers on the keys. Play us like her contrachorda. And she looks like an angel. A blue-haired angel, Magda. . . .
“‘What have you done,’ she said. Of course, she knew what I’d done. She knew me very well by then. But I couldn’t resist it, Magda, the temptation was too magnificent. I revealed to her, carefully, that I’d destroyed the data so no one else could beat us to our shimmering Out-Conclave sale. There were a couple of reels of plastase, random series with nonsense computations, lying on the desk under the console. Computer games, nothing more. But I indicated these. ‘There’s the answer to C.T.,’ I said to her. And I watched her metamorphose, Magda, beautiful Christophine metamorphosing into what she really was. Then she took her pretty ivory delectro and fired into the flexium computer leads. There was a tolerably bloody bang. When I came to, the sprinklers were on. Christophine had taken the plastase reels and run. The lab was in quite a mess. And I—you saw what was left of me, in my capsule.
“Christ, it’s getting hard to—talk, Magda. Better hurry it up. There was an emergency med-kit in the wall. The analgens numbed the burns sufficiently so that I could get out of the unit, get my car and drive to the jet-sheds. I realized that I couldn’t move anywhere but off the island, if I wanted to go on living. And I did want to live, Magda. I did, very much. She must have waited for me in my apartment some hours. She’d reacted hastily. She couldn’t be certain I was dead. She hadn’t dared fire at me direct, it would have shown up as a murder—but an energy-surge in a malfunctioning lead—they occur. In the end, she came back to the unit, and I wasn’t there, and then I suppose she tried out the plastase reels and learned about her big mistake. She’d made another mistake, too. She’d left the genetic blueprints, hers and mine, behind in the lab. And I’d taken them with me. The point is, I’d erased the answer to C.T. from the computer, but I’d still read it through beforehand. I carried it in my brain. And she knew that, Magda. And she knew what I’d do next. But not how, or where. Or when.
“Three years. She must have been on edge every day for this to happen, for you to walk in through her door. Poor Christa. Perhaps the irony appealed to her somewhat—that I’d tried to prevent C.T. from ever being used, that she’d forced me to—use it.”
Claudio’s voice had grown slurred. Sometimes his words were mispronounced; at first he would try to correct them, but gradually he stopped trying, since it wasted time.
“Being rich has so many advantages. False I.D. when things are hot. Nice friendly bribes to fan out the fires. Enough cash to hold up out of sight. To prepare the capsule, rig the Transfer. Difficult. It was—difficult. No help. Everything to be done first hand. And all the while the pain—or else so doped with analgens I could barely remember who I was. But I did it, Magda. And all I had to do after that was find—someone like you—who’d jump at the chance of a—of a new exquisite body. Christophine’s exquisite body. I—wanted to show her, just how a simulate could be misused. Magda,” he said. His voice was suddenly scored by terror. “Can’t see you anymore. Are you still there, Magda?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’ll have noticed she was more thorough with me. Every lead broken. The oxygen cut off. Able to repair, but not properly. Awash with the fucking slime-green toxic now. Suitable, applicable poison. She had it ready in her car when she went to Saint Azoro, hunting for me. Handy for her tonight. Magda, are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I knew you’d meet her. Reckoned you’d attempt to kill her—no, maybe, I didn’t. But on this occasion—kill her. She’s got the panel. She can get the answer to C.T. from the panel. She may already have—no, she won’t go to the unit now. She’ll do it tomorrow, front of everyone. Kudos. Kill her, Magda, do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Magda, I’m afraid to die. I wish I weren’t. Kill her, Magda. Ditch her body. Become Christophine. Then leave. Who’ll stop you? You’re her. It’s easy. Easy if macabre. She’s rich. Your prints are hers. Do you hear me, Magda? Kill her for her money. Not for me. Astrads. Do you hear?’
“Claudio,” she said.
“Oh, God, I’m scared,” he said. “I’m scared, Magda.”
“Claudio,” she said. She put her arms about him though it hardly mattered, he could neither see her nor feel her grasp on him.
It was not even Claudio she held. Not truly Claudio.
And then the burned anaesthetized thing in the capsule must have died, for what she held slackened and collapsed inside her arms. There was, of course, no last breath.
* * *
• • •
Magdala climbed the metal road, between the vast stems of the trees, as the flaring jewel-colors of the storm bled out of them.
She climbed slowly, exhaustedly. It did not aid her to recall that this body could not, in itself, experience fatigue. She experienced fatigue.
Rose and mauve and cerise and green, the jewels trickled down the stems of the trees. Daffodil, violet, and blue.
Presently, the forest became black. Sheer black.
The electric forest.
Nothing is to be relied on. The forest is not real. Its fires are not. Magdala is not. Nor Claudio.
Claudio.
Nothing is to be relied on.
Nothing is what it seems.
After two hours, she reached the columen bungalow, which, like the forest, had reverted to darkness.
Are you asleep, Christophine? Or awake? You can’t keep me out. Your doors are open to me.
The garage accepted the print of her thumb, and let her in. She pressed for the elevator. The elevator came and bore her upward.
She moved into the bungalow, which had no lights, not even a solitary lamp.
Magdala went softly. To the glazium chimney whose flame had been switched off, to the swinging couch where Claudio had lain upon her, to the kitchen of knives—which she did not touch. The bathroom was vacant.
She expects me. She understands—somehow—that I may not have died and that I may seek her.
Or Claudio. She may expect Claudio. As before.
She is in the solarium.
Magdala reached the elevator. The elevator rose. Five seconds. The solarium.
Darkness. Dark Glass. Overhead, a mulberry star, a star like green mint-candy. Black paper rustling: plants.
Christophine.
Christophine burst from the dark. Green dazzle, mulberry dazzle on the blade of a knife. The delectro was in the sea. What else but a knife?
The knife slit the air. Magdala caught the wrist with the knife. With her free hand she raised her own weapon high, and plunged the syringe, one third full of poison, into the neck of Christophine, into the vein which led to the heart of Christophine.
Then stood there as Christophine, sprawled among black paper leaves, kicked, contorted, lay quivering, lay dead.
And now I am Christophine.
In the garage below was Christophine’s car. Tomorrow, she would put the body of Christophine in the car. She would switch the car to robot-drive, and let it drive itself into the coruscating sea.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
I am Christophine.
She went down in the elevator and stepped out into the bungalow. She walked across the large open-plan room to the northern window-wall, and raised the two lids of the contrachorda.
Seated in the dark, and weeping, she began to play Sadrès’ “Variations on a Theme by Prokofiev.”
Post-Screening Sonogram
THE CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFERRAL Project was begun on Earth ten years ago, and as so often happens, the ethics of such a venture were not considered until the breakthrough had been achieved. By this time the Conclave was well aware that several other Federation governments had underway similar if not identical projects, and that what had begun as a race toward a medical miracle that would put an end to the savagery of particular types of replacement surgery, had now become an enterprise of paramount interest to the espionage networks of the Outer Worlds.
A program of study of the non-medical uses and effects of C.T. was therefore proposed, a project that was to be code-named Antipholus. As controller of this program, I quickly began to doubt the validity of any kind of study that was not based on actual living experiment. I was sufficiently convinced of this to suggest the gargantuan scheme that was, one year later, put into operation on the E.C. pre-colony planet Indigo Nine.
At first glance, to take an entire world off the map, put it out of bounds to legitimate traffic, and proceed to utilize it purely as a testing area seems riotously extravagant. And no doubt it is. However, Indigo Nine, though a lovely world in terms of its appearance, had not yet been opened up to popular colonization. Small, infertile save in nonedible flora, and lean in mineral deposits and uranium, without even a natural satellite to facilitate space-docking, Indigo had little to offer save room and privacy—which two properties were more necessary to Antipholus than any other thing. The erected city and surrounding plants and stations, part of a colony preparation plan but not yet occupied, proved invaluable. To build up the picture of a logically exploited world was an alarming task, in view of the fact that the total personnel of the Antipholus Program numbered only six hundred.
