This Alien Shore (67 page)

They had a machine they wanted to hook her up to, something to scan her brain. The mere sight of it started her whole body shaking, and it took all her self-control not to turn and run away right then. To her conscious self the equipment was strange and unfamiliar, but deep inside there was another part of her that knew it all too well, and the memory was clearly a traumatic one. The urge to just turn and flee this place was strong, but what would happen if she did? She'd lose these people's sympathy, and then what? What if there was just no other way to get answers?

She looked at Ra and the strange doctor and Phoenix and thought,
When will I ever trust people more than this?
And she let them affix her to the strange machine and adjust the strap that would keep her head stationary. When they turned it on, a wave of fear surged into her gut, and she reached out in sudden panic and caught someone's hand, which she squeezed so hard it felt like she was crushing bone. Phoenix accepted the pain and stayed by her, clearly sensing how hard this was for her. Little did he know! Screams filled her head and she could do nothing to escape them. God, how long could she take this? She should have asked earlier if this procedure was a thing of minutes or of hours; she sure as hell couldn't form the words now.

... need the centers of pain-stimulate directly
—
need control!—fine-tune
—
try again ...

“Are you all right?” someone asked. She managed to nod, a necessary lie.

Finally they let her free. “Thank God,” she whispered, and she sagged into Phoenix's arms, grateful for the support. She could sense the eyes of Ra and Masada on her, filled with questions, but she knew she didn't dare address them. How could she explain to someone that their “superficial” examination might be enough to push her fragile and unbalanced psyche over the edge for good?

Then the display came on, and fear gave way to wonder.

Her brain turned slowly in holo before them, reproduced in all its complex glory. The outline of her face was a mere shadow surrounding it, and as she watched, it peeled back and vanished. The skull did the same. The brain itself was a construct of shadows, whose transparency shifted a few times before Masada, controlling it, was satisfied. “All right now,” he muttered, “let's see what we've got.” The fine lines of electronic connection suddenly turned vivid scarlet, allowing them to see the pattern of her brainware—

And she heard Ra's sharp intake of breath. And Phoenix muttered something like, “Holy shit.” And even Masada, impassive Masada, seemed frankly astonished.

There was almost more bioware than brain, or so it seemed. Not merely a processor tucked into the ventricular space, with a network of contacts fanning out from it, but half a dozen clusters of bioware tucked into an assortment of spaces. There was one like a spider that fanned out just beneath her skull. There was one tucked deep into a fold of her cortex, and another nestled up against her limbic system, and much, much more. Anywhere a spare millimeter could be found, it seemed, bioware had been added. Connecting it all was a webwork of contact lines so complex that it looked like the brain was being forced through a sieve. Seeing it, Jamisia was amazed she could think at all.

At last Masada turned to her. “How long have you been modified?”

“What?” Phoenix turned away from the image and looked at her. “You're mod?”

“I ... I don't know.” She was terribly confused. Late-life modifications were dangerous, illegal, and almost unheard of in the Terran system. “I don't remember....” She couldn't even finish the sentence. It was all too incredible to absorb. “Are you sure?”

Finally Masada turned back to the display. “The ventricular processor's a standard birth implant. The rest looks like anything but. I'd say this system's been added to at least twice, possibly three times. In childhood, most likely. That would explain the positioning.” He looked at Jamisia again. “You're damn lucky your brain is in working order,” he said. No criticism there, only statement of fact. “Whoever did this ... they took a great chance with you.”

Shido. Beloved Shido, her family by adoption. They had done this to her. Why? Was it all just to give her personalities processing space of their own? She could see how that would be necessary if she was to function at peak efficiency. But the time involved with it, the expense, the secrecy ... she could barely absorb it. Finally she took a step forward and put her hand to the display, as if she could touch it. Red spider-shapes of bioware spread out upon the back of her hand like splatters of blood.

“So, then.” Jamisia wondered if she sounded as shaken as she was. “Then ... this is it? This is what they're after?”

“Oh, no.” Masada folded his arms, regarding the holo; it turned slowly before him, cerebral layers parting like the petals of a flower to reveal first one brainware cluster, then another. “This is just a series of bioware implants, I'm afraid. A high-risk combination that might well have cost you some brain functioning had it been done badly, but no more than that. And the bioware itself would be worthless without you attached. No, the questions here is, what did they think you needed all this for?”

She couldn't tell them the truth, of course. Which was that it could just be the demands of her unique condition, having twelve or more souls all hooked up to the same brainware. But why would Shido bother with something like that? Why go to such extremes to indulge the Others, if they didn't serve some purpose?

She now knew more than she ever had before, but felt emptier than ever. Where was the key she was missing to all this, the one thing that would cause it all to make sense?

She began to speak, but Ra held up a warning hand. The Guildmistress was still for a minute, accepting some input into her own system. A message?

Then she breathed in sharply, and a moment later whispered, “Oh, my God. When? How?”

More silence.

Finally the communication ended. She let her hand down slowly and drew in a deep, long breath.

Masada said, “Mistress Ra?”

She turned to him and just stared for a minute. The artificial eyes and the painted face were impossible to read. It seemed to take her a minute to find her voice.

“Ian Kent is dead,” she announced.

M
ASADA TOOK one of Ra's outships to the ainniq, and from there to Prosperity Node. The hacker came along with him, to collect data from his contacts while Masada dealt with this new investigation. Phoenix was less than happy about having to sleep through the dive—apparently he'd been hoping that being on a private Guild ship would exempt him from that requirement—but the outpilot insisted. He was the kind of pilot who tamed his Syndrome by invoking elaborate protective rituals, and apparently his particular formula required that all non-Guerans on board be unconscious through transition. Masada didn't argue with him, of course. No one ever argued with an outpilot. If they told you that the ship had to be painted purple and that all its passengers had to be stripped naked and wear live birds on their heads ... you didn't complain, and you certainly didn't argue, you just did it. Because in the end it was the outpilot who had to face his Syndrome alone, and dodge the most vicious predators in the known galaxy, and if it helped him to have those conditions met, that was a small price to pay for safety.

The Guild didn't lose many ships anymore, but every now and then it still happened. A ship would return with the bodies of its passengers all intact, but emptied of all human spirit. Or sometimes a ship would just disappear, and no one would ever know whether its outpilot had failed to manage his Syndrome, or simply failed to outrun the hunters.

And now Kent. A pilot once, accustomed to the deadly Syndrome and the surreal universe to which it granted access. A pilot robbed of his livelihood in an instant, and left embittered and crippled to live out his years in safespace. Kent didn't have the skill to design Lucifer, but he might have aided others who did. Did he hate outpilots enough to strike out at them like that, resenting the power and the freedom they possessed, which he had lost forever? Devlin Gaza thought so. Gaza had said that Kent was one of the most likely suspects in Guild circles. The Prima said only that she couldn't imagine Kent hurting his own people ... but she didn't deny that he had the profile for it. Outpilot's Syndrome by definition was an unstable condition, and though drugs and bioware could rein it in, they could never fully eradicate it. The Syndrome required enemies, or it fed upon itself, that was a known fact. In a world with no more monsters to flee from, had Kent created monsters of his own?

All of those were questions for others to answer, not him.

And then there was the girl.

Phoenix had insisted on bringing her along. Ra had insisted that she must stay on Guild property if he did, and a contingent of Ra's own personal guards would travel with Jamisia to assure her safety. Masada knew that the Guildmistress was willing to indulge the pair in the hopes that their actions would reveal something of the girl's true nature, but he had his doubts. Fortunately, she wasn't his project. He had promised Ra he would observe her and report all that he saw, but he doubted that his
iru
nature was going to provide any great insight into what was obviously an unstable psyche.

Maybe the girl had just a touch of the Syndrome in her. Maybe an echo of that dread disease had somehow survived all the years of eugenics. If so, she was hardly going to prove a threat to the Guild. If she was walking around and talking like a normal Terran without a battery of drugs and med programs to boost her sanity, then she wasn't affected enough to be an outpilot, now or ever. And the drugs weren't there, though the programs might be. Ra had checked.

It was too much for him to think about now. He had been so absorbed with Lucifer these past E-months, and now was so elated by the new wealth of information that Phoenix promised to make available, he could muster no interest in the twisted plottings of Earth. For hundreds of years the motherworld had dreamed of having outpilots of its own. For hundreds of years it had failed to create them. It might have come close if Lucifer had succeeded, but Lucifer had been discovered and would soon be neutralized. Now Earth must start all over again in searching for the Guild's secrets.

Except of course that it wouldn't be able to. When the connection between Earth and Lucifer was proven to everyone's satisfaction, the waystation at that node would be dismantled and the motherworld abandoned. Let them stew in their own overpopulated juices and reflect upon the fact that this time they had brought their misery upon themselves. Masada knew there were trillions in the outworlds who would applaud Earth's downfall, and commemorate the day of her isolation as a holiday for centuries to come. He suspected Gaza would be among them.

And he would go down in the history books as the detective who had made it happen. A strange kind of glory, that. He wasn't all that sure he liked it.

T
he body lay on the floor of the studio ... or rather, the holo that replicated the body did so. It was a truly gruesome sight even without solid flesh behind it. Whatever had killed Kent had been agonizing, that was clear. His eyes were wide open and staring, bulging out from his head as though his very flesh had tried to squeeze them out. His hands had dug into the floor where he had fallen, so that shards of it were driven up under his fingernails, splitting them into a bloody mess. And his face ... his face was a mask of fear, wide gaping eyes the centerpiece of a countenance consumed by horror.