Vestiges of Time (5 page)

“We have, on the one extreme,” AkweNema was saying, “castes in positions of power and wealth that have no useful function and are only parasitic to society, consuming vast quantities of goods and services, yet contributing nothing. And on the other extreme are castes which have fallen far down the scale of society and now exist to no good purpose, consuming little, but with their members doomed to live in poverty and hunger, with no hope of ever finding gainful employment in their present lives. They are sustained only by thoughts of the Dark Lords and passage beyond the lands over which they rule, for what need is there for a caste of chimney sweeps when there are no chimneys left to sweep? Castes such as those are also parasitic to society, though I’m certain that the people who are members of them do not wish to be.

“Let me say here, Master HarkosNor, that we of the BrathelLanza—the Brotherhood of Life—are not anarchists or wild-eyed radicals out to destroy the caste system entirely. Not at all. We merely wish to purify it, to restore it to the state of cleanliness that made NakrehVatee the great nation it once was not so many years ago.”

KaphNo looked up briefly, a crooked, unpleasant smile on his face as if he had just bitten into a lemon and didn’t want to admit how sour it was.

“Our goal,” AkweNema said, “is to return a better life to the castes, to the people, of our nation.”

As he talked further of the evils he saw in the present society of NakrehVatee, as he further enumerated the wrongs that must be put right and how the BrathelLanza would go about doing it, his words came more quickly, more harshly, and there came into his eyes a gleam I didn’t Uke, a glow perhaps of fanaticism, or of madness.

And when I glanced at the other faces, I saw reflected in their eyes that gleam I’d seen in AkweNema’s.

I’d gotten myself mixed up with a bunch of fanatical revolutionaries, by God!

But the Shadowy Man had said . . .

It may have been thirty minutes later when AkweNema finally came to find a specific direction in his harangue.

“So we have banded together in the BrathelLanza,” he said, “the Brotherhood of Life that will set things right in NakrehVatee, Lord DessaTyso and Professor KaphNo and myself, Ladies OrDjina and EnDera, Drs. ThefeRa and SkorTho, psychologist GrelLo, and the many others whom you will meet in the coming days, if you agree to join us in our sacred cause.

“We have formed cadres all over the nation, and the people who believe as we do, who believe that the time has come to cleanse the nation, have come to us, have joined us. We are training them and arming them so that when the day comes we can rise as one force, solidified in our resolve and our commitment, and put down those in positions of ill-gained power.”

He paused, licked his dry lips. I wondered how much of his speech had been memorized and how much of it had come to him as he spoke.

“We have already formed the nucleus of the new government,” AkweNema continued, his voice calmer now. “Lord DessaTyso will be our chief of state, for such has been his training from birth and such is the right his lordship has inherited from his magnificent ancestors, the founders of our state.” Lord DessaTyso smiled broadly and basked in OrDjina’s obvious admiration. “With humility, KaphNo and I will do our best to serve as his ministers Sinister and Dexter. The cabinet largely has been appointed and will join us here when the time comes. Ibe people will supply the new parliament when the castes have been purged.”

“And when will all this take place?” I asked when he paused again.

“We will rise a year from now, perhaps,” AkweNema said. “I hope no longer in time than that. You, Master HarkosNor, can be a factor in helping us determine the date.”

“Okay,” I said. “So you’ve got a place somewhere for me in all this. But where it is I can’t imagine.”

“We need a fighting man to lead our troops,” AkweNema said, “and we need the nucleus of a fighting force that we hope to make superior to anything the government presently has in the field.”

“And I can do that?” I asked incredulously.

“We believe you can,” he replied. “We have studied you from the day you first approached our agent RyoNa,” he admitted. “For example, the girls you have slept with—they are all our people, and they have studied you well.”

“Oh?” I said.

He nodded. “We have also checked your background, and we find it of the sort we need. Your experience in combat is greater than that of any other man your age in all of VarKhohs, perhaps all of NakrehVatee,” AkweNema told me.

And I thought: The guy who sold me my computer identity said it would be everything I’d ever need. I guess he was right. It had cost enough.

“We are satisfied with you, HarkosNor,” DessaTyso said. “You are the sort of man we need.”

“Then will you join us?” AkweNema asked.

“What exactly do you want of me?” I asked in reply. “You shall be our general in the field. You and your private army”—he smiled as he said these words— “will spearhead the takeover of the central government buildings of VarKhohs.”

Old KaphNo looked up from under his eyebrows. “You are familiar with the concept of cloning, are you not, Master HarkosNor?”

“Of course,” I said, wondering why he asked.

And as if I hadn’t answered, he continued: “Every

cell of the human body—save only the sex cells designed for diversity in the next generation and a few very specialized cells like those of the blood—holds a complete genetic blueprint of the parent body. That is, every bit of genetic information that existed at the time of your conception, in the combined sperm and egg of your parents that grew to be you in your mother’s womb, is repeated in exact replication in the cells of, say, the skin of your left index finger, or in the cells of your intestinal lining.”

I nodded, beginning to suspect. Sometimes I may be slow, but I’m not
that
dense.

“From any one of those cells,” old KaphNo went on, “under the proper conditions, there can be grown an exact duplicate of you, HarkosNor, down to the last detail.” He paused, then added: “Except, of course, for the effects that environment has had on you. A clone grown from the cells of HarkosNor would have neither the scars you carry on your body nor the memories you carry in your head.”

I nodded, then said, “I
kn
ow.”

“We propose, then,” AkweNema picked up after KaphNo grew silent, “to take sample cells from your body—a simple and painless operation, I assure you— and from them
grow
an army of your physical duplicates, an army which you will train and which you will command.”

“There is a phenomenon called ‘resonance,’ ” KaphNo said. “Through it, so it appears, the senior member of a replicated partnership or group—in this case, yourself—is able to exercise a significant degree of, shall we say, telepathic control over the junior members. It is not yet well understood, although the same or a similar phenomenon—‘sympathetic awareness,’ it is often called —was long ago first observed in identical twins, which have many similarities to multiple replicates.

“Furthermore, resonance is even more pronounced when the senior of a replicated unit is an adult at the

time of replication. During the later stages of maturation, so it seems, the senior may totally dominate the ‘offspring’ replicates: that is, by moving in before the brains of the replicates have been exposed to any significant number of external stimuli—we’ll go into more detail regarding all this later—and by establishing a resonance pattern before these external stimuli have ‘awakened’ the brain and allowed it to begin to develop a distinct personality of its own, the senior may exercise
complete
mental, psychological control over the junior replicates, even when separated from them by great distances.”

“An army of flesh-and-blood robots controlled by telepathy,” the lord DessaTyso said. “Something the fools in power today have feared to create. Fear of the anger of the gods. Ha! More likely fear of creating a power greater than themselves.”

Ignoring his lordship, AkweNema said, “Such an army we propose to give to you, Master HarkosNor.” I remembered a dream I’d once had—it now seemed like a long, long time ago—a nightmare in which I was an army of duplicate people going up against a similar army that was even greater than mine. I shuddered in remembrance of that dream, tried to push it from my mind.

“And in return for your services, HarkosNor,” AkweNema was saying, “we offer you a ‘time machine,’ if you still want it when the victory is ours. We offer you a place in the ruling cabinet of the new NakrehVatee. We offer you wealth and power such as you might never have dreamed of before.”

“You have my word on this, Master HarkosNor,” the lord DessaTyso said, beaming in his magnanimity. “And ours as well,” AkweNema said.

In the pause that followed, I refilled my wineglass and drank it empty again.

“We shall not demand that you answer at once,” AkweNema said. “We will give you time to think, to

decide. We will not rush you, but we hope that you can see fit to join us—and soon.”

“We need your help, barbarian,” the dark woman OrDjina said, speaking to me as an equal, despite the title she’d just given me.

“We do indeed,” her lord agreed.

I nodded, grunted, and finally spoke. “It’s a tall order.”

“It is late now, gentlemen, my lord, my lady,” AkweNema said, “and I am certain that Master HarkosNor is tired.” Looking at me, he said, “A suite has been made ready for you.”

“And to show you that we mean you well,” the lord DessaTyso said, “the first of your rewards will be waiting for you there. Is that not so, OrDjina?”

“EnDera is there, my lord, awaiting the barbarian,” OrDjina said, and gave me a wicked smile, the meaning of which wasn’t exactly unclear to me.

AkweNema rose to his feet, offered me his hand, and said, “Come with me, then. I will show you the way.” And as I followed AkweNema out of the luxurious suite and down the brightly lighted corridor, I hoped by all the gods of all the Earths across the Lines, including the dark ones of VarKhohs, that the Shadowy Man was really on my side this time. But hadn’t he always been?

6

EnDera

The suite to which AkweNema led me was not as large as his or quite as luxuriously appointed, but there had been no stinting in it either—nor was there stinting in the first of the “rewards” offered me by the BrathelLanza for my future services.

The girl named EnDera was in her early twenties, with a distinctly Oriental look about her, an almost yellowishness to her skin, and epicanthic folds that gave her eyes a slightly slanted appearance. My first thought was that she might have been Japanese, but I was mistaken about that.

Her almond eyes were bright and sensual; her lips were curled in a smile; her hair was as long and as black as that of OrDjina, though it fell without curls do-lvn her back; her body was as rounded and as mature as that of the older woman, and the sight of it under the sheer, light blue gown she wore, a filmy thing more transparent than opaque, created for me nothing less than seduction. Between her breasts, visible through the fabric of her gown, dangling on a golden chain, was a looped cross of beaten gold, an ankh, an ancient symbol of life.

Had I not just met the beautiful lady OrDjina, I would have said that EnDera was easily the most beautiful woman in all VarKhohs. She was the second most beautiful, then. Who was I to complain?

AkweNema quickly made the introductions and as quickly left us, saying only that come morning we would talk again about the matter of my service to the
BrathelLanza. I agreed, but I was in no hurry for morning to come—and in no hurry to feel the pangs of guilt I would feel when I thought of Sally, so far away. . . .

“So you’re the barbarian?” EnDera said in a lilting voice that carried just a trace of an accent as she sat down on the floor cushions and gestured for me to do the same. Before her sat a tall bottle of wine and two glasses.

I sat down as she poured the wine, and said, “I wish people would quit,calling me that.”

“Barbarian?” She handed me one of the glasses.. “Well, you do speak like one. Your accent is worse than mine.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that, but that doesn’t make me the next best tiling to a trained ape. I am house- broken, you know, and I rarely chew up people’s slippers.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t really,” I said. “But I’d prefer you called me Harkos.” I’d really have preferred that she call me Eric, but I knew that was out of the question, and before she could say what I knew was coming next, I added, “I know that’s a barbaric name too, but that’s the name T’ve got.” You pays your money and you gets potluck.

She smiled again and daintily sipped her wine.

“You’re a NakrehVatea?” I asked, to break the silence that followed.

She nodded. “I was bom in the West, near MaKohl. But my parents were immigrants from PalaBarhah.” That was the name, Here and Now, for southern China. “We moved to VarKhohs when I was very young. I consider it my home.”

“And you’re a member of the BrathelLanza?!’ I asked, hoping I was pronouncing it correctly.

“Of course,” she said, seeming surprised that I