Wayfarer - Satori Part 13

"And I accept your demand, Andrew. But as of now I'm putting you on notice that upon completion of that mission, some forty-eight standards from now I believe, I require that you turn over all collected data to me for official fleet usage. All of it, Andrew."

The bishop looked at him in stony silence. Finally he spoke in a tight voice. "Are you invoking fleet privilege, Admiral?"

Yamada nodded. "Officially. I am declaring this a Triple Red Emergency, Cla.s.s One."

"You know the consequences if you are wrong?"

The admiral nodded again, his face grim. "As well as you know the consequences if I'm right, Andrew."

Chandra watched the dimly visible form inside the s.h.i.+eld. Incredible. The young woman was still struggling, still fighting. He could see her body twitching weakly, straining feebly against the straps. By now she should be limp as a rag doll. He wondered.

He thought back to the kidnapping. He'd disobeyed orders. Rather than knocking her out with an anesthesia dart, he'd jumped out from behind a tree and grabbed her. He'd intended to beat her up a little and rape her. And he'd looked forward to the terror and anguish he'd known her eyes would show as he did it.

But it hadn't worked out that way. The look she'd given him was far from one of terror. Instead, her eyes were full of cold contempt. The glance had stopped him in his tracks. Then, before he could even work up his anger to the point of a.s.saulting her, she'd simply fainted and crumpled to the ground, slipping through his numbed fingers.

Confused, he'd slung her over his shoulder and run back to the s.h.i.+p with her. She was still unconscious and unmolested when he'd delivered her to Thwait.

The whole incident filled him with a resentful fury. d.a.m.n the little b.i.t.c.h! How had she cheated him of his fun? With just a look? Impossible! He wanted revenge. Long-drawn-out, brutal revenge. Simple rape wasn't enough. He wanted to degrade her, to destroy her so thoroughly that she'd be ashamed of even being human. No, he wanted to destroy even her humanity. He pictured her whimpering and cringing in the corner of his cabin, violated in every conceivable way again and again and again.

A warm excitement began to glow in the pit of his stomach. He licked his lips and his eyes became feverish as he stared at her form there behind the s.h.i.+eld. He imagined again some of the things he would do to her and he became stiff and hard.

He was panting now, the sweat beginning to stand out on his upper lip. His hands were claw-like and trembling. If only, he thought, she wasn't behind that d.a.m.n s.h.i.+eld, I 'd start right now. I 'd rape her and choke her at the same time. Hurt her. Bite her till she bled. I'd ...

Overpowered by a pa.s.sion he'd never experienced before, he made a decision. The bishop wouldn't be back for a long time. Hoa.r.s.ely, he croaked out, "s.h.i.+eld down." Trembling as much from fear over the audacity of what he was doing as from his s.e.xual excitement, he watched the form of Myali appear as the s.h.i.+eld disappeared. "Helmet up," he whispered, his tongue almost too thick to let the words by.As the helmet rose, he leapt to the chair and began to pull off the wires. His hands were trembling so badly he could scarcely undo the straps. There! Only two more to go. d.a.m.n! If only she was conscious so he could see her eyes when she realized what he was going to do ... The horror in their eyes was the most exciting part!

The last strap fell away and he grabbed her slumped form. Supporting her with his right hand he gripped her robe with his left and ripped it down the front, exposing her body. With a strangled cry he flung her to the floor and crouched to spring down on her.

Chandra froze in that position as the voice cut through his haze of excitement. Befuddled he looked up to his right. The bishop was standing there, a laser wand in his hand.

"Chandra, Chandra, your enthusiasm does you credit, " Thwait said coldly, "but you carry it too far when you countermand my orders to the machine. Luckily, I left it instructions to inform me when it had completed its task. When you interrupted the process, it contacted me with the completion message.

Little did I think what form that completion had taken."

He walked closer, the wand still pointed firmly at Chandra's midsection. "I had no idea you had formed such a strong attachment to our prisoner. Could it be a case of l.u.s.t at first sight? Surely you satisfied yourself during the capture. No? Truly amazing. The young lady is even more interesting than I thought."

The bishop's voice lost its slightly bantering edge and became hard and vicious. "Chandra, this is rank insubordination. You will be punished." To the air he said, "Guards."

For several moments the two of them stood there silently staring at each other. Then the door opened and four of the bishop's special security force came into the Room, laser guns drawn. One of them placed his weapon against Chandra's head from the right, another jabbed him in the back. The third quickly searched the former chief of security, discovering a surprising a.s.sortment of weapons in unsuspected places. The fourth guard stood back several paces, covering everyone.

The search completed, the officer in charge turned to the bishop for orders.

"Sedate him thoroughly and put him in solitary confinement until I decide what to do with him. Double guard." He motioned them to leave.

As Chandra reached the door he paused for a moment. "Thirteen years," he said softly.

"That is what I do not understand, my child. And I have always found that if I cannot understand a man, the best thing is to destroy him. Goodbye, Chandra."

Without warning, and beyond all hope, the attack ceased. Myali didn't even have time to be thankful or to wonder at it. Utterly exhausted, she simply collapsed into deep unconsciousness. Her Mind Brothers, separated during the battle with the machine, left Chandra as his emotions slammed to a sudden halt, and nestled back down into Myali's mind, sated by their little meal.

Bishop Thwait looked from the monitor readouts to the girl, once more strapped into the chair, and back to the readouts. He didn't like it. It wasn't anything definite, he admitted. The readouts seemed to indicate things had gone as they should. But there were disturbing anomalies. Like this flurry of activity here long after anything but a totally flat response should have been observed. Or this strange spike here.

Or the long, slow decline in the overall response curve. Too long, too slow.

d.a.m.n Chandra! What in the h.e.l.l could have possessed the man? Thirteen years of cold, controlled s.e.xual sadism, and suddenly he becomes so excited he can't contain himself. Unnatural. And worse yet, unpredictable. If the fool hadn't broken into the process when he had, it would have gone to completion.

But as it is, there's no way to be absolutely sure how successful the operation was. What do all those anomalous spikes in the readout mean? d.a.m.n it all!

The visual displays weren't detailed enough. Hard-copy printout would give more precise and complete information. He tapped a code into the control panel and stepped back to watch the printout feed swiftly into a bin over to his left. In just a few moments, the task was finished and he walked over, scooped it up, and returned to sit at his table. He liked the feel of the hardcopy, the heft, the weight, the solidity. It reminded him of his books. Somehow visual displays were never satisfying to him. Even though he admitted they were more versatile and practical, they lacked the substance of hardcopy. And data, he believed should always have substance.Carefully he went through the readouts. He paused occasionally, musing, his gaze resting abstractedly on the empty air, his fingers drumming a vague beat on the table top. Then he plunged back into his study, more intent than ever.

When he was finally finished, and his eyes rose a last time from the information spread out on the table, he gazed long and silently at Myali, a puzzled expression softening his usually stern countenance. I wonder what you really are? he thought. And what really took place between you and the machine? The data revealed many anomalies, but there was no pattern to be found. The oddities were there, but seemed random and meaningless.

Random, meaningless? He found that hard to accept. The machine had hit the girl and hit her hard.

She hadn't responded the way most humans responded. But on the other hand, her response wasn't totally unique either. In general, it had been quite as expected. And right now, for all he knew, her information was totally accessible. Yet there were those little differences, those odd spikes where curves should have been flat and flatness where there should have been spikes.

He got up from behind the table and began to pace back and forth in front of Myali, thinking, chances are, she's been battered so thoroughly by the machine that I can get anything I want from her. I'll have to operate on that premise until I have reason to believe otherwise. Therefore, I should have her moved to a recovery room, let her rest while she regains consciousness, and then question her in the usual manner. If anything seems incorrect at that point, I can always put her under the machine again and see to it that the process goes all the way to completion.

Yes, he decided, stopping to stare down at her still form, that's the course I'll take. The only danger is that if I have to put you under the machine again, I'll have wasted many precious hours. How long, he wondered, until Thomas finds out about you, my child? I must get what I need before he does. I must because I need it to maintain control of this mission.

"You are a problem, my child," he muttered out loud. "An unexpected problem. Rather than being the a.s.set I thought you would be, you have complicated the situation. You were to be a source of data, an answerer of questions, a solver of mysteries. Instead, you have turned out to be as much a mystery as the rest of your d.a.m.nable planet."

He turned away from her and paced back behind the table. Placing his open palms on the table top, he leaned forward and glared at her. "Yes, you have turned out to be a problem rather than a solution.

You and your planet. A problem that cannot be allowed to remain unsolved. Thomas would like simply to smash you, the way he did Quarnon. But -that would not solve the problem; it would simply remove it.

No, the Power cannot allow that. For if this anomaly has appeared once, it may appear again. Therefore, we must be prepared to deal with it, to discover the origins and meanings of it, so we can wipe it out at its source.

"You and your entire people are a miswoven patch in the fabric the Power is creating from mankind.

We must pluck you apart, thread by thread, and then reweave you to make you merge with the whole.

Ripping you out, destroying you, is not acceptable to the Power. You must be made to blend, to conform."

The bishop stood upright, clasping his hands behind his back. "I was right, you know; my hunch was correct. When I read the records of this Pilgrimage I immediately sensed a problem. Nakamura. The man was a Zenist and a scientist, and those two groups were the bitterest enemies the Power fought when it saved mankind."

He laughed shortly and began to pace again. "Ha! Thomas, that shortsighted fool, thinks you helpless and harmless merely because you lack a technological civilization and advanced weaponry. But I know the real danger you represent and it has nothing to do with science and technology."

"Yes. Yes. They all think the Power saved mankind from science, that we rescued them from the destruction of the home planet, from the fouling of its skies and water, from the rape of its natural resources. And they are right. We did. The Power stopped science dead in its tracks. Oh, yes. We took the knowledge away from the scientists who had so badly misused it. Now the Power, and only the Power, has access to it."

"But science was not the true enemy. No, science was only a manifestation of the actual demon wechained to save mankind."

He spun around and glared at her unconscious figure once again. "Not science, my child. No, not science. Freedom. Freedom was the beast we slew."

In triumphant silence he paced briskly back and forth for several minutes. "Ha! It surprises you! But that is only because you do not understand."

"Mankind as a whole cannot handle freedom. It sets people adrift, lost in a vast sea of insecurity.

Freedom gives them the duty of making their own decisions, but denies them any guidelines. Freedom demands they take responsibility for their own fates, but fails to provide the power necessary to accomplish it. Freedom promises them the universe, but neglects to put even a crust of bread in their mouths. Freedom isolates men, pitting them one against another in a bitter struggle for survival, a war of all against all."

"Here and there, of course, there are a few men who prosper under freedom. They are strong enough, smart enough, vicious enough to grab the world by the throat and make it yield what they demand. They rob the weak, taking for their own use what has been wrested from nature by the sweat of others. They grow rich and powerful."

"Is it any wonder that the others, the ma.s.s of humanity, throng to these mighty ones, throwing down the freedom they cannot bear, pleading to be allowed to serve? After all, the powerful can provide the very things freedom cannot ... warmth, wealth, a full stomach, and a level of security unattainable by the lone individual. Frightened, hungry, insecure, confused, men cast aside the freedom that has become an eternal d.a.m.nation to them and seek salvation by bending their knee to someone or something greater and more powerful than themselves."

"But this partial yielding of freedom by the many to the few is not enough. The rule of the mighty ones does not bring on a Golden Age of peace and prosperity. Instead, it intensifies the struggle. Now the war of all against all that freedom makes inevitable takes place between organized groups of men. The random pilferings and occasional murders of the past are replaced with violence on a grand scale. Armies sweep through the land and whole populations are pillaged and slaughtered."

"Thus it had been for centuries on the home world before the holy Kuvaz spoke the Word. All was chaos. The mighty, with their herds of followers, were locked in a grim death struggle. Scientists battled politicians, environmentalists fought corporations, one nation attacked another. Race war, cla.s.s war, religious war raged uncontrollably. On and on it went, a mindless cycle of death and destruction."

"Like many of the wisest, the holy Kuvaz saw the inevitable end approaching. But unlike the test, who simply threw up their hands in anguish and despair, he saw the solution."

" ' Take the burden of freedom from men's shoulders,' he declared. 'Give them bread to satisfy their bodies, authority to satisfy their minds, and miracles to satisfy their spirits. Make them all, even the mighty, once more like children so they may laugh and play in innocent happiness.' "

"But the holy Kuvaz knew mankind and realized that the mere wisdom and truth of his ideas were not enough to guarantee their success. He understood that no matter how much men hated and feared freedom, they still desired it. How else could they feel? For generations they had been told freedom was the most wonderful thing in the world, the ultimate goal of humankind. Wanting it had become like second nature to them."

"No. The simple truth could not defeat a lie of this magnitude. Another, greater lie was necessary.

One that would conceal the true goal, yet achieve it nonetheless. Thus was born the crusade against science."

"Science was the perfect scapegoat. Those who followed its myriad disciplines were some of the purest and strongest proponents of freedom. By defeating them, a tremendous blow would be struck at the very heart of the archenemy."

"And for all its incredible power, science was weak. Each scientist valued his own freedom to pursue his own research above all else. Hence they stayed aloof from the rest of the society, jealously guarding their independence. Even among themselves they generally remained isolated, organizing only occasionally to meet some invasion of their privacy and freedom to learn."

"Even more telling, though, was the fact that science had done a great deal of evil as well as a greatdeal of good. The good, naturally, was taken for granted. But the evil, ah, the evil was never forgotten nor forgiven. It was everywhere. In the thick and stench-filled air. In the dead and polluted water. In the ruined and barren land."

"So science became the enemy against which the holy Kuvaz rallied mankind. And none but the innermost members of the Power ever realized it was nothing but a surrogate through which we struck at the real enemy."

"It was not an easy fight. Science was stronger than antic.i.p.ated. There were some who seemed instinctively to understand what the holy Kuvaz was doing, and, unlikely as it might seem, became allies of science. The Zenists were the strongest and most dangerous of the lot."

"But in the end, the Power triumphed. Science was shattered. The Zenists and the other allies, smashed. The knowledge came under the sole control of the Power and with the strength it gave us, we were able to destroy the last feeble bastions of freedom."

"Thus the holy Kuvaz saved the human race. Peace, rigorously enforced by the Power, spread across the Earth. Except for occasional actions to root out recalcitrants, all was quiet. Production increased because men no longer had to choose what to produce. The Power told them. There was bread for all. At the same time that men's bodies were satisfied, their minds were put at ease. The total authority of the Power told them what was right and what wrong, what to think and what not. Difficult decisions no longer tortured their days and nights. Nor was there any lack of miracles to satisfy their spirits. By keeping the knowledge to itself and surrounding it with mystery, the Power made even the simplest feats of science seem wondrous."

The bishop paced back and forth for several moments. His face glowed with pride in the achievements of the Power. He rubbed his long, slender hands together in barely suppressed pleasure.

"Ah, yes, ah, yes," he muttered several times. Suddenly he stopped dead and whirled on Myali, his arm thrusting out, his finger pointing directly at her face like a laser wand. "Yet still," he hissed intensely, "there was danger! The Power was not totally secure! Freedom was dead on the home world, oh, yes. But out there," he gestured grandly with his arms, "out there in the rest of the galaxy where the Pilgrimage had scattered the seed of humanity, freedom still lurked. Who knew," his voice dropped almost to a whisper, "when it would return?"

"Consider. The Pilgrimage had taken place before the holy Kuvaz had spoken the Word and initiated the Readjustment to save mankind. Many of its leaders, men like Nakamura, had been the worst sort of heretics. Those who followed them were equally dangerous since they had been so infected by the poison of freedom as to leave the home world to seek it in far-off places. The archfiend could only flourish in such a hotbed of iniquity."

"It was not enough that the Power control only Earth. Or even just the solar system. If we were to achieve the goal of the Word and totally transform mankind and the universe, we had to control every man, woman, and child in existence." His eyes bright, the bishop raised his hands in the Sign of the Circle. "We believe in reality because we have faith in our perceptions and we have faith in our perceptions because we believe in reality," he intoned with ritual solemnity. "In the name of reality, in the name of humanity, so be it and so it shall be."

For a few moments he stood silently, looking up at the circle made by his fingers, his face transformed by a look of near ecstasy. Finally he spoke reverentially in a soft voice. "This is the central core of the holy Kuvaz's vision. This is why freedom had to be defeated and forever denied. We create reality and reality creates us. There is no place for freedom. We must grasp mankind and mold it to our ends. Thus we create reality. And in turn, reality will reinforce what we create. Around and around it will go, perfecting and improving with each feedback loop. We will become the ultimate masters of the universe because we will create it in our own image at the same time it creates us in its."

"So you see, my child," he said, lowering his arms and walking over once more to stand directly in front of the unconscious young woman, "you and your planet must be made to conform. You must be stripped of your freedom and blended into the whole we are creating. That is why, unlike Thomas, it is not your technology or weapons I fear-it is your ideas. I must crush them."

He returned slowly to the table, his head down, musing. Sitting, he leaned forward, his elbows on thetable top, his chin in his palms. "First," he murmured, "I must find out exactly what the machine has done to you. There may be no problem at all." He hesitated. "And yet, I wonder. There is something strange here. Something I cannot quite put my finger on." He gazed briefly down at the readouts.

"Ah, well," he sighed as he sat back, "there is nothing for it now but to put you in a recovery room until you come to and then question you. Guards," he ordered. The door opened after a few moments and two men entered the room, their security-force uniforms soothing to his state of mind. Ah, the strength of the Power is evident on every hand, he thought complacently. 'Take her," he ordered, "to C-forty-eight for recovery. Double guard. Call me immediately if she becomes conscious. Otherwise I will begin questioning at 0600 hours."

The two guards un-strapped Myali from the chair, lifted her limp form to a gurney, and then wheeled her quickly away. When the door closed behind them, the bishop sat for a long time, staring off into s.p.a.ce, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

The admiral cursed. d.a.m.n that f.u.c.king son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h Chandra! What a stupid-a.s.s thing to do! Now my source of information is gone.

"s.h.i.+t! I don't have time to corrupt another one of Andrew's people. I'll have to play my hand and demand access to the girl. It was a lot better when he didn't know I knew. Got all the info I needed without him one bit the wiser. f.u.c.king, stupid a.s.shole! If Andrew doesn't kill that c.o.c.ksucker, I will."

XIII.

It took Myali a long time to return to full consciousness. First she had to counteract the effects of the drug the bishop had injected at the base of her skull. It had immediately gone to her mid-brain, attacking the synapses in her amygdala and hypothalamus. There, in me cleft between the pre- and post-synaptic membranes, it had somehow decreased the absolute refractory period while acting as a highly efficient transmitter substance. The result was an almost continuous firing of the neurons, which sent ma.s.sive waves of rage and fear surging through her mind. Without her training and the mutations in brain structure which gave her conscious control of her limbic system, Myali would probably have been driven insane.

Instead, she was able to clamp down on the whole region, isolating it until the drug wore off.

The second half of the recovery was the part that worried her most. Exactly how much of her mind had the machine destroyed? It had felt like a lot while it was happening. Now, slowly and carefully, she checked through her mind to a.s.sess the full impact of the damage.

The result was more encouraging than she had hoped. A great many areas were badly battered and scrambled, others had been knocked about, but were still reasonably well intact. Nothing, she was pleased to discover, was entirely destroyed. It was all still there- just rather jumbled and confused.

She set to work putting things back in order. The job took considerably longer than isolating the drug had taken. Nevertheless, within two hours the task was pretty well completed. She opened her eyes and looked around.

The room she found herself in was rectangular, about twenty feet by fifteen. There was only one door, directly opposite where she lay strapped to the gurney, on the other long wall of the room. Next to the door, on the right, were a screen and some dials. The rest of the room was totally bare.

Everything-walls, ceiling, floor, door-was the same dull gray color. Not a very inviting place to spend a weekend, she decided.

Finis.h.i.+ng her investigation of the room, she took detailed stock of her situation. Physically and mentally, she was in unexpectedly good condition. Not great, mind you. There were plenty of bruises and strains in both mind and body. And here and there an actual wound. But, even though she admitted she was weaker than before, there was no question in her mind she was strong enough to carry on.

In compensation for being a little weaker, she was a lot smarter. Now she knew the enemy and how to fight it. And although she hadn't been able to beat the machine, she had been able to avoid beingbeaten by it. At least this time.

Her previous experience with the memory probe had proved very useful. Although this a.s.sault had been vastly more vicious and powerful than the first, the machine's method of attack had been similar. It moved in straight lines, smas.h.i.+ng anything in its path by sheer brute force. She couldn't steer it this time; it was just too strong. But the technique she had used against the probe, combined with what she had learned from the Master of the Soft Way, had given her a method for defending herself.

"Always meet a rectilinear attack with a circular defense," the Master had explained. "Never try to stop it dead in its tracks or thrust it aside with a perpendicular force. Both may work on occasion, but sooner or later you 're going to be too slow, too weak, or both. Instead, create a sphere of invulnerability around yourself. Allow each of your enemy's blows to touch that sphere only as a tangential line. Then use the energy he creates as he touches your sphere to spin, deflecting and redirecting his force by your motion. Thus he will miss his target and his own force will serve to give you the power to defeat him."

It sounded so simple. She almost smiled in remembrance. So simple. Yet she had spent years sweating in the hot sun of the practice yard trying to perfect the technique. "Softer," the Master had corrected her again and again. "Softer. Direct all your force to creating and maintaining the sphere. Don't reach out with your strength to grab the opponent. Let him come to you, graze your sphere, and impart his power so that it becomes yours. Softly, softly. Pull in your power. Absorb his. Thus. So."

Eventually it had come. And she became a Master in her own right. Never quite good enough to defeat her own Master; she lacked something deep inside to accomplish that. But good enough, good enough.

She had fought the machine that way-pulled herself into a tight ball of selfness against its battering strength.

The hardest choice, of course, had been picking which parts of her being to draw into the sphere and which to leave outside, helpless and vulnerable to the smas.h.i.+ng power of the machine. She knew very well the fate that awaited anything left outside. The experience of Dunn's mind had been a useful warning.

Things had gone satisfactorily at first. But the machine wasn't like a human opponent. It never tired and it never made foolish mistakes. It wasn't possible to turn its power back on it, to throw it off balance and bring it helpless to the ground. Every time she managed to twist and spin away from the machine's awesome might, she took another step back. And slowly but surely the battle had turned into a gradual but inevitable retreat for her. A retreat that pushed her closer and closer to the one place she feared more than any other ... the abyss within.

The abyss, the void, the nothing, the endless dark that fell through all eternity! It was worse than death itself. No, it was death itself, death at its most horrible. Death of the self, of meaning, of being; the ultimate disintegration, the final despair.

She knew the abyss. Every path she'd ever followed had eventually led there. Time and time again, just when she'd thought she'd finally caught up with that elusive thing she pursued, she'd found the void yawning hungrily at her very feet. And trembling in horror, she'd stumbled back away from it, defeated and despairing.

The Master had told her it was the thing she sought, that she should throw herself into the bottomless, Stygian depths and fall, fall, fall. The very thought took away her strength and left her quivering and helpless. To fall eternally. To disintegrate. To ... No.

What was the abyss? It was the place all who followed the Way came to sooner or later. The Way showed the Seeker that the sense of reality so carefully constructed to make being-in-the-world possible was nothing but a tissue of transitory, limited, fallible sense perceptions. When examined closely, solidity disappeared, time halted, and even the self splintered into a thousand unconnected fragments. The world, the universe, simply evaporated like a wisp of morning fog.