SONG CHING WAS STILL NURSING HER MENTAL WOUNDS
from her visit with her mother. Her mother had always been one of
her idealized people, the superwoman who could and did do it all
and who had always loved and protected her, even many times against
the cold whims of her father.
“You cannot let him do this!” she had wailed at her
mother. “Please! To marry, yes. That is part of my
station and my duties. But to have him wipe it all out—it is
a waste!”
“Sit down over there, my less than honorable daughter, and
listen,” her mother had replied. “We must now have the
talk that I have known we must have since you were little. Your
tears do not tear at me this time, for I know now that you have
tears only for yourself, never for others. Now you will sit, and
you will listen.”
“Most honorable and loving mother, I—”
“Do not speak thus now, for you do not mean those words.
This is not a good world or an honorable one. I doubt if the world
has ever truly been any different, no matter how we romanticize it.
Your life has been so sheltered, so privileged, that you do not
even truly know what the lives of most of your race are like. Oh,
you have played at being a peasant in the small peasant play place
that we have here, but that is not truly what that life is like. It
is clean, and you always know that you are playing, that servants
are but a gesture away, that nothing truly bad will happen to you,
and that you will return to the silks and flowers and fine food at
day’s end. I am not even talking about the Center; I am
talking about here, on our island, in our native
province.”
The inevitable lecture always had to come first, although this
was a new variation on the theme. Song Ching just sat and waited it
out.
“Most children are born to women without benefit of
doctors or medicine in their own miserable one-room huts near the
fields and paddies where they work from dawn to dusk with never a
break, never a holiday, never even a day off. They must make their
quotas or starve, since if they do not make their quotas, many
others will also go hungry. They leave their excrement in pit
toilets; the flies and other insects are always there, and so is
the smell. They eat two meals of rice mixed with some vegetables
or, rarely, a communally shared small portion of unprocessed meat.
They face heat and cold, flood and drought, pestilence and eternal
poverty. They are ignorant, superstitious, have never imagined
electricity, indoor plumbing, or any sort of mass communications
and transportation. Their view of luxury and longing is silk
clothing and Peking duck, neither of which they are likely to enjoy
in their lives. You know nothing of this.”
“Neither do you,” Song Ching responded petulantly.
“Not really.”
“You think not. I was born of peasant stock on a landhold
barely a hundred kilometers from here, on this island. I was born
at four in the morning; my mother was ordered out to continue the
rice harvest by noon—and she did. The mud and flies and filth
were my home and my early memories.”
Song Ching stared up at her mother. “If this is so, why am
I just now hearing of it?”
“Because you were born and raised in the leadership, the
upper classes, where such peasant blood would have worried you, and
it is not something one bandies about in our society without
causing prejudices to form.”
“If it is true,” her daughter responded,
not really believing it, “then how did you come to your
position?”
“Your father is a most—unusual man. He was born and
raised to be a soldier, but he had a bent for science and a head
for figures, and so he was chosen at the age of twelve to go to
Center for education and training, to become one of the Elect. He
excelled because he allowed nothing at all to stand in the way of
his advancement. We like to believe that his coldness and his
callous indifference to others is a mask, but it is not. He wears
no mask. I doubt if your father feels emotion, at least in the same
way that other men do. I do not think he can. In a sense, he is
more like the machines which rule us than a true man. He made
himself that way, because to think like them and be like them is to
know them and be favored by them. When he conceived his idea of
dynastic genetic manipulation, he of course needed to found a
dynasty. He required a wife.”
“And he selected a peasant over all those of his class
here and at the Center?”
“I do not know the process, except that it was calculated
as finely as one of his equations. He knew the truth, although it
is heresy to say it, that there is no difference between peasant
stock and aristocratic stock except who your family is and how much
wealth it has. They came to the village one day and took samples of
the blood of every girl under fourteen. He wished a peasant girl
because while he needed someone intelligent, he did not wish a
highly educated and polished woman. He wanted someone with no
family of consequence that he would have to accept or deal with, as
he would with aristocratic or Center women. My family could not
afford many girls; they were delighted to be rid of me. Just what,
genetically, he saw that made me the one is something I have never
known. The answer to ‘Why me?’ is an absurdity. It had
to be someone. It was me.”
“But you are a botanist! An educated woman of
accomplishment beyond the home!”
“I took it up after I was at Center and it was necessary
to give me the teachings and background needed to live there. He
permitted it so long as it was always secondary to my role of wife
and hostess and politician for him. And, of course, I was the
subject of his experimentations, out of which came you. During all
that time I have never complained, never regretted, never had
second thoughts. Although I am dead to my village and my own
family, I have never forgotten them or their lot, and I have always
thanked the gods for giving me this life, and I have tried hard to
do my duty and carry out my responsibilities as his
wife.”
Song Ching was silent for a moment. “Why do you tell me
this now?” she asked finally.
“Ever since you were born, you have been coddled and
spoiled. You have had only the best of everything. You have been
insulated from the outside world and its ways. In the past few
years, you have dared things that would have gotten any other
executed, no matter what her class or station, whether woman or
man. I knew that he was testing out and protecting his handiwork,
but I, too, allowed and excused it, although on different grounds.
I knew that one day you would have to face your own destiny and
carry out the duties and responsibilities your father intended for
you, and we both knew that considering the spoiled and
self-centered world you lived in, this would not be possible
without locally adapting you.”
The term “locally adapting” sent a chill up Song
Ching’s spine. It meant that her mind, her memories, her
talents and abilities, her personality and attitudes would be
eliminated or manipulated and replaced with a far different and
radically inferior template—but that such changes, although
accomplished by both permanent psychochemicals and reprogramming,
would not be passed on in any way to her offspring.
“How can you let this happen? I am your
daughter!”
“I could not stop it. Deep down, you know that. It is too
important to your father. Still, I can remember the cold, and the
mud, and the hunger gnawing at the pit of my stomach. I will always
remember it. You will never have that. You will have your silks and
perfumes, your fine food, servants, and all the rest. You will not
be a part of Administration, so you will not have to undergo memory
imprints and Withdrawal and all the rest. No man will have you as a
wife as you are. You have no sense of honor, duty, family,
sacrifice, even love except for yourself. I say that in shame, for
I am partly to blame for it.”
“Who says I must have a husband, anyway? Why must women
always defer to men? I’m smarter than any man I ever met. I
can do great things with the machines, maybe greater ones if I
continue my work and my studies. Am I a person or a test
animal?”
Her mother had sighed. “What first to answer? Men are
dominant in our culture because that is the way it has been for
thousands of years, and the system worked and survived and
protected the people. Men are dominant in our culture because the
machines that make our rules decided to return to the ancient
culture where it was so. It cannot be changed. Even if it is not a
good thing, it cannot be changed. That would not be allowed. Any
who try to change the system are eliminated. You yourself know
this. You saw the attack on the illegal technologist fortress.
Every nation, every culture of humanity, is set by command. No
alterations are allowed. Everyone who ever tried has failed
miserably. That is why your father thinks in the long term. His
foundation is his pride. He finds it intolerable to be subordinate.
He has risen as high as any can rise in our society—and he is
still subordinate and still fearful of the machines who spy on him,
and he hates them. He is brilliant enough to know he cannot defeat
them. He is idealistic enough to hope that perhaps his descendants,
as a mighty dynasty, might find a way.”
“But it’s not fair! I didn’t ask for
this!”
“The mere fact that you would make such a statement shows
why above all else this must be done. It is not fair that we must
live some machine’s vision. It is not fair that our destinies
are predetermined. It is not fair that my brothers and sisters grub
in the mud while I scold maids for improper dusting. No one in this
world ever asked for what they got. No one has much choice. It is
enough to make the best out of what you have. It must be, for the
only alternative is death.”
Her mother had paused a moment, then added, “You ask why
you cannot continue your work. It is because you are dangerously
close now to exposing the whole family. Sooner or later you would
try to beat the Master System, and that would be the end of
us.”
“The Master System can be beaten! We do it all
the time!”
“No. The Master System can be cheated, which is
not the same thing at all. It knows we cheat. Unless we are
incompetent enough or brazen enough to allow ourselves to get
caught at it, it doesn’t seem to mind because we cheaters do
not threaten it or the system. The fact that we can cheat and get
away with cheating is our moral authority to be the leaders and our
badge of office to Master System. You cannot defeat it, and you
cannot resist trying. For your own sake, we must prevent you from
trying.”
“For your sake, you mean. Mother—this is no
template. They are talking about killing me, killing my
mind, leaving only my body! My body will live, but someone else,
someone totally different, will be inside it! How can you allow
it?”
There were tears in her mother’s eyes in spite of attempts
to suppress them, but her mother had simply sighed. “I cannot
stop it,” she had replied, then turned away and stalked
quickly out of the room, leaving Song Ching alone.
Song Ching took dinner alone in her room, although she barely
picked at it and had no appetite. She looked at the silk bedding,
the many fine clothes and jewels there, the art and intricate
tapestries, the perfumes and the rest, and decided she’d
trade them all for peasant’s garb and mud and thick rice if
she could just stop this from happening.
She needed to get back up to Center while there was still time.
There, in her own element, she felt she could cheat her father as
she and he both cheated the Master System. She had an advantage
there, one which she was certain he did not know about and which
might prove useful, but if she was taken away and immediately
thrown into reprocessing, she knew she’d never have the
chance.
For the first time she considered suicide. It would be
honorable, certainly, and would bring no disgrace on her family and
friends, and it would be a way of regaining control. They had given
her the date of her death, but they expected still to have a
daughter and an experiment after that. By taking her own life, she
would cheat her father out of his damned dream and maybe make them
all regret this. From her point of view she would be no worse off,
but she would have a measure of both control and revenge. The more
she thought of it, the more attractive it became.
She had trouble getting to sleep, but finally she did doze off.
Deep in the night, however, she came suddenly awake, absolutely
convinced that there was someone else in her bedroom with her.
There was someone! A large, dark shape right at the foot
of her bed!
“I see that you are awakened,” her father said. He
clapped his hands, and a servant brought in a lantern, then bowed
and quickly exited. “You greatly upset your mother tonight.
This in turn upsets me and threatens the family as well. You force
me to act to forestall drastic and irrational actions on the part
of one or the other of you. Get up and dress now for a journey. You
are leaving here this night.”
She gasped, but there was never any thought of not obeying her
father implicitly when in his presence. He was that sort of
man.
“Please, honorable father,” she said while dressing.
“May I be permitted to ask where I am being taken?”
“You will go with a small detail of my most trusted men to
the emergency skimmer landing site and there be placed aboard and
transported to Center for reprocessing. It was not intended that
you know about this at all, to spare you and others mental anguish,
but because you discovered it, there is no longer any purpose in
postponing it. It will be better for you and for everyone if it is
done quickly.” He turned to the door.
“Captain!”
A young officer, looking only half awake, entered and bowed.
“Sir?”
“You have your specific instructions and much latitude in
completing this business quickly, quietly, and successfully. You
and your men understand well what will happen to you all if
anything is the least bit amiss at the end of this?”
“Sir, they have all been informed and are eager to carry
out your orders.”
“Then take this spoiled, self-centered brat with no honor
within her and bring me back a proper daughter!”
The captain simply snapped to attention.
She was led out into the night and placed in a closed carriage.
Two nasty-looking and very determined soldiers sat across from her,
and more were stationed on the rear and atop the driver’s
seat. No words were exchanged; they were off as soon as she was
aboard.
The night was cloudy and dark, so there would have been nothing
to see of the countryside even had the shades in the coach not been
drawn. It took less than an hour to reach the landing site, and the
skimmer was already waiting. Her father was never one to let the
details slip.
The site was rarely used; in fact, she could not remember it
ever being used. It was there only because it was both out
of view of the main roads and villages and close enough to the big
house for her father’s use in an extreme emergency.
Ordinarily, the rule was that no one see the skimmers if at all
possible, and the craft generally flew at high altitudes where they
were invisible from the ground and landed in remote, sealed-off
areas.
Everything had happened so suddenly that she hadn’t had
much chance to think, and even though she was wide awake now, the
whole scene still had an unreal, dreamlike quality about it, as if
it were happening to someone else and observed from a distance.
The skimmer was a small five-seat courier ship built for speed
rather than cargo. There were pilot and copilot, then three seats
across immediately in back of them. Song Ching was flanked by the
captain of the guard on one side and one of the beefy soldiers from
inside the coach on the other.
The captain got up and leaned over her, then pressed hard on her
wrists. She was startled and looked down to see that her wrists
were now secured with thin but very strong metal bands coming out
of the seat.
“A thousand pardons, my lady, but this was ordered,”
the captain said, sounding really apologetic.
Her feet were positioned and strapped in place, then her seat
harness was drawn down and attached. None of the restraints were
tight or really uncomfortable, but she couldn’t move.
“This is not necessary, Captain,” she protested, trying
to sound brave.
“It is necessary because it is ordered, my lady,”
the man replied, settling back into his seat and fastening his own
harness. “Your father believes that you are very
resourceful.”
Resourceful, she thought glumly. Resourceful enough for what? To
somehow overpower all four men, steal the skimmer, and make a break
for some place he couldn’t find me?
The door closed with a solid chunk, the cabin was
pressurized, and they took off, rising straight up in the air, in a
matter of minutes. The whole affair was so well organized, she had
to wonder about it.
“Captain? Excuse me, but just when did my father give
orders for all this?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Two days ago, my
lady.”
She nodded to herself. Two days ago. When she had first let slip
that she knew what was planned for her. Somehow that figured. Made
her mother upset, huh?
The craft attained its approved altitude, then went forward,
slowly at first but with ever-increasing speed, pressing them all
against their seat backs. She could see the instrument board from
her seat and watched the air speed indicator climb until it finally
slowed and halted at their cruising speed. She hadn’t known
that skimmers could go that fast. It was close to the speed of
sound.
At this rate, they might well be back at Center by dawn.
If there was one place where Center was not, it was at or near a
center. It was, in fact, on the site of a former small nomadic
village on the edge of the northwestern desert. Sinkiang was a
beautiful, exotic province, but it was not a place that could
ordinarily support large numbers of humans except in a few isolated
spots.
It was light before they reached Center, and ordinarily she
loved to look out at the vast expanse of mountains, tablelands, and
desert from which the great dome of the city rose, but she felt
nothing now, not even apprehension. It was as if something within
her was already dead, and she had even managed an uncomfortable and
intermittent sleep on the journey.
They landed in a special security zone after clearing the
shield. The door opened, and the flight crew shut down and got out,
then the captain undid her restraints and helped her up. She was
stiff and sore from being held in one position for so long.
Although she knew the great city well, she had never been in
this area before. She had known it was here, of course, but the
area had held little interest for her before.
They marched her down a long corridor with automatic security
gates every ten meters or so, each one opening easily before them
but closing behind with a strange finality. The corridor led down
far below even the maintenance level of the city. Finally, they
reached a reception room of sorts, where the captain and his guard
were relieved of their responsibility. There they were met by a
five-member squad of military women, all of whom looked like they
loved torturing small children and animals. All five wore the
loose-fitting tunic and baggy trousers commonly worn in Center, but
these clothes were white with broad red stripes on them. She
wondered why they would wear such strange and ugly things.
“Honorable lady, I apologize for the journey and thank you
for allowing us to do our duty,” the captain said sincerely,
clearly glad that his part of things was over. “I wish you
only the best fortune.”
She felt as if she were expected to thank her executioner, but
the man was clearly in a spot himself and had treated her with
respect. “Return with my blessings, Captain,” she
responded. “Thank you for your courtesy.” And with
that, the two soldiers got a signed receipt from the head of the
squad, bowed, and left.
“Stand there and remove all of your clothes,” the
squad leader instructed in a harsh, nasty voice.
Song Ching was startled. Never in her life had she undressed in
front of strangers. “I am the eldest daughter of a warlord
and the chief administrator,” she responded proudly. “I
do not get spoken to like that, nor do I disrobe in
public!”
“Get one thing straight, little flower,” the leader
snapped. “You were those things. In here you are
nothing. You are the property of the state, and we are the state.
We have all sorts of highborns here, many greater than you, and it
all means nothing here. If you do not begin to disrobe in five
seconds, you will be restrained and forcibly disrobed. From this
time on, there will be no second chances. When someone gives you an
order, you will obey it or it will go hard on you. Voluntarily or
bound and gagged, it is all the same to us.”
For the first time she felt really scared, but she still did not
comply. Her pride would not allow it. A gesture from the leader was
made, and two women moved swiftly, throwing her against the wall
and then ripping off her fine silks. She screamed and struggled,
but no one came to her aid or seemed to mind in the least. Her arms
were brought forward, and light but strong handcuffs were placed on
both wrists, each clip fastened to the other by a chain roughly
half a meter long. She could use her hands, but only within limits.
Nearly identical cuffs were placed on her legs above her
ankles.
“Now, will you walk or must we carry you?” the squad
leader asked, a note of satisfaction in her voice. Clearly she
enjoyed exercising power over those born to a higher and more
privileged position than she.
“I will walk,” she responded sullenly.
They moved fast; she almost had to shuffle to keep up, her
stride limited by the leg restraints. They took her into a room and
sat her in a barber’s chair, and a woman there quickly
trimmed her shoulder-length silky black hair to a short masculine
cut. Her long, pointed nails were not cut down, but they were
trimmed to a roundness that looked grotesque. She was then given a
crude but thorough shower, with the guards doing the scrubbing. The
experience was humiliating, and she wanted to scream, but she
wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. She decided
quickly that what would disappoint them the most would be to keep
an aristocratic air and remain fatalistic.
Again she was marched down an endless series of corridors until
they reached a line of doors. When the squad leader activated one
with a thumbprint, the door slid back and Song Ching was ushered
into a cell. Her arm and leg bindings were then undone and
removed.
The cell was completely empty. The walls, floor, and even the
ceiling were featureless and thickly padded. Lighting tubes at the
wall-ceiling joints provided good, if soft, light, but those
fixtures were a good four meters up and protected by some sort of
opaque material. The whole cell was not more than four by three
meters.
“Now, listen well,” the squad leader told her.
“You will remain here until called for. Your father who
committed you ordered this so that you might not do harm to
yourself. You will be fed twice a day here, in the cell, under the
eyes of a guard. Anything you do not eat will be removed when the
guard leaves, and you will get no more until the next scheduled
meal, so eat. The cell is soundproof, but that small piece in the
door is one-way glass. We will look in on you from time to time to
be sure you are all right, but we will not disturb you. If you need
to eliminate, go to this corner and sit. A toilet will adjust to
you. Do not, however, put your hand or anything else in there. The
toilet is a dry one, and anything that should not go there will be
trapped and held there until we come and remove you. If you look
over here next to the toilet area, you will see a small flexible
tube in the wall. If you thirst, suck on it and water will be
dispensed in small, measured amounts. The reservoir takes one hour
to refill. Also, any attempt to do yourself harm and you will get far
shorter handcuffs and leg chains. Any questions?”
“Yes. How long will I—be here?”
“As long as is necessary. Don’t worry. When you
leave here, you won’t remember any of this, even in your
nightmares.” With that, the squad left, and the door closed
with an awesome finality.
For a while she paced and fumed in frustration. They had it all
worked out, their methods honed over centuries of experience.
Worse, they really could do almost anything they wanted to
her because, as the guard said, she would remember none of it and
so could not complain or report it. She even guessed the reason for
the guards’ odd clothing. Probably workers left their own
clothes outside and picked up those uniforms once inside the
security barriers. Thus, even if someone managed somehow to get out
or make a break while going to and from the medical area and
somehow beat the security checkpoints, that person would either be
nude or wearing very conspicuous clothing.
What was so frustrating was that her own computer lab was
probably no more than a hundred meters up and then a kilometer
away. In those rooms she could take control and show them
all—if only she could get to them. If, if, if, she thought
sourly. If only she’d kept her big mouth shut about this and
worked out a way to come back here to finish up a few things. If
only she hadn’t been so wild that even her mother could no
longer see her as anything but a threat. She had been so smart with
all things electronic, but she realized she’d been pretty
stupid when it came to people. She had always been in command, in
control. She’d never had to worry about other people.
The cell was an effective prison. She examined it closely, every
joint and junction, until she saw a small dark spot hidden behind
the light guard in one corner. The others were harder to make out,
but there seemed to be one in each corner. Somewhere, perhaps not
far off, someone was sitting in a chair and looking at her in the
full three dimensions, probably recording her and analyzing her
every movement with computer psych analyzers. She had never felt so
exposed or humiliated in her entire life, and she hated them for it
and hated her father for ordering this. Just a laboratory animal,
that’s all she was to him. The imperial ducks were the most
pampered and protected of pets—until it came time for the
formal dinner. The difference, the only difference, here was that
the ducks didn’t—couldn’t—know their fate
as she did. It was a difference that would be of no relevance to
her father, she knew.
She was fed in a little while. The starkness and absolute
soundproofing of the cell had already made her lose all track of
time. They used two female matrons, one to serve and the other to
stand guard with a nasty-looking baton that, Song Ching was warned,
gave a nasty but temporary shock and left no marks. The meal was a
large bowl of extremely gummy white rice topped with some light soy
sauce and a few lumps that pretended to be vegetables. She was not
given chopsticks, another indignity, and had to eat with her hands.
She ate very little of the first meal, and it was then taken away,
and she was left alone for what seemed like an eternity. Within a
very few feedings, though, she was eating quite well and even
anticipating the next meal, not only because she felt as if she
were starving but also because no matter how nasty and terse the
guards were, it was some interruption, some human company.
After a while she had no idea how long she had been there or
whether or not her system was being disrupted by irregular
feedings, but after a while the cell and the routine became her
only reality; her old life and family already seemed far away.
When the door opened the next time, she thought it was for
another meal, which seemed overdue. She was starved, but it was not
for feeding. They stood her up, gave her a hospital gown to wear,
then placed the handcuffs and ankle restraints on her and led her
out. She still felt distant, in a daze, not really able to do more
than go along with her captors.
She was given a thorough physical exam by both human doctors and
machines, and she understood now why they’d left a meal out.
They injected tracers, then placed her in small chambers for
analysis. Then it was back to the cell and mealtime. They repeated
everything several times, at least twice after a meal to compare
some results with others, but it was always back to the cell.
Finally satisfied, they took her to a small room and had her lie
on what seemed to be a giant bed of cotton. Her head was covered
with some kind of scanner, a top was brought down, and then they
began doing odd things. Her nipples and other arousal spots were
gently stimulated. Various areas received pressure, some
uncomfortably, some not, and at one point she felt as if someone
had stuck a pin in her behind. Later, humans would be there with
some of the same unpleasant stimuli, and she resisted a bit and
tried to avoid the needles, the pressure pads, and the rest.
Finally she was bathed and then taken down to the place she dreaded
most, which was simply referred to as the surgery.
When she and her guards arrived, though, the previous project or
whatever it was was still going on, and they had to stand and
watch. There was not a lot to see; two young boys, it appeared,
were strapped on cots while technicians monitored them. Song Ching
looked around and found much familiar in the surgery. There was
medical equipment, of course, but the computer interfaces were the
same as Center standards. Center stage, as it were, was a set of
the latest mindprint machines. If I could get loose in here, even
for five minutes, I might escape this thing, she thought
wistfully.
“If I may humbly ask,” she whispered to the chief
guard, “who are those boys, and what have they
done?”
The guard surprised her by answering. “They are the
children of a tech cult. The only survivors. They are being mined
of all they know, and then they will be sent to Melchior. Be happy,
little flower, that you are not in their place instead of your
own.”
Melchior. She had heard of it in her father’s business.
The prison from which none returned, under the control not of
Master System but of the Earth Council, which included her father.
Rebels, deviants, and political prisoners were sent there, it was
said, for unauthorized medical experimentation. A chamber of
horrors, she knew, but a chamber of horrors not on Earth but in
space, inside one of the asteroids. In
space . . .
“We can’t wait all day,” one of her guards
snapped. “Let’s just log her in and leave her. These
doctors always keep their own schedules.”
The leader nodded, and she was taken to a comfortable chair, not
unlike one in a barbershop, and her regular restraints removed.
They then logged her in to the security computer.
“Subject Priority one nine seven seven,” the guard
said to the computer board. “Log in and secure in Chair Two
subject only to Doctor Wang’s or the master security
code.”
“Acknowledged,” the computer responded in a crisp,
human-sounding, but expressionless voice. Clamps came out from the
chair as the guards held her in position, securing her arms, legs,
chest, and neck.
“The doctor will be in to see you when he’s ready,
little flower,” the guard told her. “Just sit and relax
and watch the show.” And with that, they left her.
She turned her head as much as she could to watch the
technicians across the room with the two boys. She wished
they would go before the doctor got here. This was perhaps
the only chance she would ever have, and she was anxious not to
miss it, although she had no real plan.
A small, thin man with a gray wispy goatee entered, stopped, and
looked at the technicians. “Leave that for now. They
aren’t going anywhere,” he told them. “I have
much more important work to do. They can be read out on automatic,
and I’ll call you when it’s done.”
“As you wish, honorable doctor,” responded one
technician. After checking their boards, they left as well.
Wang came over to her and gave her a friendly smile.
“Hello, there. I realize that this has been most distressing
to you, but it should be very many more days until you are rid of
us. I am Doctor Wang, Chief of Psychosurgery here. It is an honor
to work on someone like you.”
She stared at him. He was treating this as if it were a skinned
knee or a broken arm. “You are my murderer. I do not find it
at all amusing,” she said coldly.
“No, my dear, I am no murderer, although you are not the
first to make that sort of comment. I’m no butcher like those
two will face on Melchior. I am an artist, you might say. I take
people like yourself who are a danger to themselves and their
families, and I create out of them people who will live full,
happy, productive lives. My media are your body and your mind, but
what is created will come from you, not from me. I only give some
instructions here and there and nudge it in a positive
direction.”
“I am not insane! You are not curing someone who is sick!
You are destroying someone who is well and far more productive than
your results could ever be.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. Insanity, you see,
has always been what the ruling culture said it was. In many places
advocating that the Earth is round or that it moves about the sun
would be absolute evidence of insanity. To be sane is not to be
correct but to fit in with one’s dominant cultural patterns.
You are not insane by Center’s lights, but you no longer can
be allowed here. You are going into areas dangerous to everyone,
and you cannot possibly be stopped without treatment like
this, anyway, which would make you valueless here. Thus, you must
be rendered sane according to the culture of the people.”
He was behind her now, adjusting equipment that came down on
either side of her head and touched both her arms.
“We could have the computers do all of this, with no human
intervention,” Wang told her, “but then it
would be destruction, since everyone would come out
according to a set of machine statistics. We cannot, however,
involve the Master System here until quite late in the exercise
since, quite frankly, there is too much in your head that we would
rather not have Master System know about. Nothing in here, for
example, is directly connected to Master System. It gets the
results we wish to report, not what really happens. I’m
certain you know that game by now.”
“Yes,” she responded sourly. No direct
connection. Everything was perfect except she couldn’t
do a thing about it!
“All right, now let’s take a good look at
you.” There was a click, and in front of her formed a
hologram of an amorphous mass.
“That is the part of the brain we deal with first,”
he told her. “That’s you there. Let me make
some adjustments.”
The image changed as parts of it were eliminated and smaller
parts enlarged until there was just a skeletal outline of a single
small area in orange outline. In the bottom were a tremendous
number of holes, a few of which were filled with solids of many
colors in the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
“Countless thousands of neural receptors are inside your
brain,” he told her, “all of which are now being
monitored by the computer. We are visualizing only a cross section
of the basics, but what we see here can tell us what is happening
elsewhere. For example, you have high hormonal levels, but your
psychosexual level is quite low, meaning that you don’t think
of physical sex as very important to you. Now, that energy has to
go somewhere, so it goes into aggression, a drive to work or
achieve, that sort of thing. It’s all interrelated, and it
shows up quite clearly on my monitor here. You—your conscious
self—are actually the result of matching your biochemistry to
your memories and experiences. We are far less free than we
believe. The brain’s biochemistry creates much of our
personality, our limitations, our interests, and our inclinations.
Before we can ever deal with memory, we must deal with the
biochemistry, those receptors. To do it any other way would not
give us you to compare things with. It would be hit or
miss, trial and error.”
She stared at the hologram in horrified fascination. “You
are saying we are nothing but machines. That what I see is
my Master System, my core program, which was determined by my
genes.”
“In a way, yes. However, all biological creatures have a
multiplicity of sensors and an even more complex set of social and
cultural interactions. Key to it all are the receptors for pain and
pleasure. In normal cases we would not have to eliminate your
expertise in computers, for example. By reorienting, by blocking
certain receptors from that work stimulus, and creating unpleasant
sensations when it is invoked by the brain, while giving a
different activity, such as weaving, an interrelationship with the
old pleasure center, we can create someone who knows all about
computers but is not the slightest bit interested in them and finds
them obnoxious but to whom sitting at a loom would be pure delight.
In ancient times some of this could be forced by deprivation and
conditioning, but it was brutal, unsure, and sloppy at best. This
cuts out the middleman, as it were, and ensures permanency and
perfection.”
“This—this is what you do?”
“Primarily. Everything is subject to the cranial
biochemistry. We can make you cry and feel miserable when you are
happy and laugh hysterically at the funeral of your best friend.
Even humor and tragedy are found here. It is like opium. The
experience is so pleasurable that nothing else is possible except
sustaining the experience. Opium drops pleasure modules in the
receptors. It is, however, a foreign substance and is eventually
expelled as such by the body, but the experience lingers so much
that you wish only to find more. That is addiction. Once we
discover the right mix of modules and blockers, we can stimulate
your own body to produce the needed enzymes. As with genetically
mandated enzymes, the combination that forms you as you are now, we
will use blockers to prevent undesired genetically mandated
material from finding its receptors, while our newly stimulated
substances will find theirs. Over a relatively short period of time
the body will adjust and shift to this new pattern, overriding the
old, and it will be totally permanent and self-perpetuating. It is
so complex that only a computer could isolate and define all the
receptors and determine the mix, but only after I tell it
the desired goals. There.”
She felt pressure and a very slight momentary stinging in her
right shoulder.
“Just relax. Only a mild test,” he assured her
soothingly. “Purely transitory. We won’t get into
anything really elaborate today.”
She waited, scared to death of this man and his machines, and
watched the hologram. Not all the chemical pieces remained put for
any length of time; things were always changing, pieces
disconnecting and others coming in, although the basic pattern
remained the same.
Now, suddenly, some new pieces came into the scene, in colors
not otherwise represented. Some were jet-black; others were yellow
or gray. Many went right by, but some headed immediately for
receptor points as if on homing beacons. A few of the black ones
stuck to a blood vessel wall, as if waiting, and when some of the
blue pieces vacated their natural positions, the black ones
dislodged themselves and then swept in to fill the emptiness. More
of the blue entered, natural chemicals, but they found their places
occupied, and after pausing as if they were intelligent creatures,
they moved on and out of view.
She continued to watch, and suddenly she began to tremble. She
felt afraid—afraid not of the doctor or his machines but of
everything. She began to cry, and the cry turned into
uncontrollable sobbing. She felt a sense of terrible despair.
Everything was hopeless. She was unloved, reviled, loathsome to
others and to herself. She was unworthy, incapable of doing
anything right. She needed someone—anyone—to protect
her, to guide her. She needed someone—anyone—to
instruct her in all things. She was afraid almost to think, to make
any decisions, because she could only make the wrong ones. She felt
so humble, so tiny and insignificant, that she wished someone would
take her and command her.
The display shifted, although she had not seen it and had not
even felt the second injection. Substances of differing colors
moved in and eased out the foreign objects; the black ones were
ordered out, and some but not all were replaced in her biochemical
tapestry. .
She stopped crying, feeling much, much better now; a damp cloth
wiped her face, and she smiled at the feel. It felt
wonderful. Everything felt wonderful. Her whole body
tingled, and even the brush of skin against the chair or her
hospital gown seemed an erotic caress. She was drifting now on a
wonderful, magical euphoric cloud in which nothing at all mattered.
They could do anything, anything at all to her, and it would not
matter. She rarely had any sort of sexual dreams or fantasies, but
this was real, and she wished someone would come and take her and
ravish her body and do whatever they wished with her. She had a
vision of herself as a sultry woman of pleasure, dancing, moving,
naked and free in front of a group of adoring men, and she really
liked the fantasy.
Blockers and enzymes shifted and changed, and the feelings and
the fantasies faded quickly. Reality returned, although she had
always been conscious of where she was and what was happening. The
difference was that she was becoming clearheaded once more, coldly
confident, and increasingly angry over what was being done here.
She struggled against her bonds, cursing the fact that she was
trapped in a weak woman’s body. She didn’t
feel like a woman; deep down, she had a vision that she
was a man, a man trapped by science or sorcery in this weak
girl’s body, a strong and virile man with courage and
confidence and raw animal power. She’d rather bed this body
than be trapped in it. Anger turned to pure animal fury, and she
struggled against the metal rings that bound her. Adrenaline
pumped, and she actually twisted and bent the rings and
managed to get one hand free. He would show them!
He would.
More shifting, more changing color patterns. The sense of strong
sexual identity faded but was not replaced. She had no concept of
maleness or femaleness; gender was an irrelevancy, without meaning
to her. The anger, too, faded quickly, and she felt totally calm,
unable even to relate to the emotions she had experienced up to
that point. She was like a machine: aware, intelligent, but without
passion, without any feelings at all about anything. Yet she was as
clearheaded, as logical, as she could ever be. Stripped of her
animalism, she stared at the patterns in the hologram and almost
immediately grasped their logic and meaning based upon what she had
seen so far. At this level, where even pleasure and pain, fear and
love, were mere terms, she analyzed her situation. She was being
reprogrammed, but this level was the most efficient for undertaking
an escape. There was no hatred, no bitterness, no feeling of any
sort that was relevant to her. Escape was mandated because this
stage was the optimum one for her potentials, and it was illogical
to abort it.
“I believe we have done enough for today,” Doctor
Wang said casually. “Too much can wear you out and cause harm
to the body. My! You really did a job on those restraints! Well, I
will just recline you now and allow you to rest and the enzymes to
be expelled from your system. It will probably cause you to sleep,
so just relax and let it happen. I’ll be back in a few
minutes to check you out, then you can go and eat.”
She watched the doctor actually leave and no one else come back
in. She did not feel elation or any other emotion, but she realized
immediately that they had made their first mistake. There was
simply no way that the chief administrator, her father, was going
to allow this place to be without standard safeguards.
“Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one,”
she said aloud in a calm, expressionless voice. “Emergency
override activation is ordered.”
A computer voice responded from somewhere to the left rear of
her. “Code acknowledged,” it said. “Reason for
interrupt?”
“Pawn takes king.”
“Accepted. Instructions?”
Her father could never trust anyone, and that meant
anyone. All Center computers with human interfaces were
programmed with override codes that would allow him, if need be, to
countermand almost any order. He changed the codes quite often and
then just as often forgot them, so he had them encoded in his
personal files. The only time when he couldn’t depend on this
was when he was away in Hainan or on Leave, as he was about to be
now. For that period, he needed a sequence of codes he could always
remember, and he often used a variation of the same sequences year
after year. At fifteen, she had broken that code and had gone
undiscovered, and she had had little trouble in the hidden room
back home in establishing the few changes for this year now that
she knew what she was looking for. That had been her one hope, but
this had been the first opportunity to use it.
“Subject in Chair Two is object threat to king. At a point
when this laboratory is not scheduled for use for a period of at
least one hour, you will release subject from cell and substitute
recording of previous time of subject in cell so that this is
undetected, and you will suppress all alarms and guarantee
uninterrupted access. You will be prepared to assist and guard. All
outbound channels are monitored, so this is under my seal
alone.”
“Understood. Additional?”
“I would like to perpetuate my current physical and mental
orientation until otherwise instructed. Then stand by until I am
able to contact you here again.”
“Understood. Formulating.” There was a pneumatic
hiss below her arm, then an injection. “Duration indefinite.
Must be altered chemically.”
“Understood. Switch off. I will sleep now.”
She went immediately to sleep and did not dream at all.
She awakened back in her cell, but one thing was different. This
time they had left the rice bowl and cool tea and not remained to
watch her eat. Apparently they were confident of her and themselves
now. She would require energy, and there was no way of forecasting
when more might be available, so she went over and ate it all. She
drank sparingly. She was aware that she could not move for long
periods about the cell without attracting attention. She had been
so—animalistic. She therefore assumed a position of
meditation facing the door and willed her body into trancelike
stillness. For the first and only time in her life, she had nearly
total control over herself; she did not wonder at that but rather
took it for granted.
There were alternatives to consider. Song Ching was in the
Master System, so Song Ching must be accounted for somehow, at
least for a sufficient length of time to make good an escape. She
was in control only of the local network here; she had to take care
not to flag Master System and not to raise human alarms. Master
System she thought she could block for a sufficient period of time;
the humans were the unpredictable ones.
Even if she escaped from here, though, there would be little she
could do. Any security flag within Center itself would be
immediately checked with Colonel Ching or her father. All direct
access by her would have been blocked long ago. She could, of
course, survive almost indefinitely in the maze of tunnels and
service corridors. They might eventually activate a Val, but it
would be useless because it would have her old imprint and assume
that she would act on animal and distinctly Song Ching motives. If
nothing else presented itself, though, she would do that until she
was either captured or had managed somehow to tie in to the network
from below and use it.
She also had infinite patience and waited for the inevitable to
happen or not to happen. She could not even feel any sense of
danger or excitement. Her plan was something that had to be tried
on grounds of pure logic; it was that and nothing else which
motivated her. She would not even feel disappointment if she was
apprehended, or even if the door failed to open at all.
But it did open. She waited a moment to make certain that it
hadn’t opened to let an orderly pick up the food, then stood
and walked out and down the maze of corridors, all barriers opening
before her. She had been this way in a conscious state only once,
but the route was absolutely clear to her. She met no one but was
fully prepared to kill if she had to. Death meant absolutely
nothing to her.
The lab was deserted, as she knew it would be, and she ordered
it sealed to the outside. “How long can you avoid someone
discovering I am gone?” she asked the computer.
“With an adjustment in the records showing that you have
been fed and tended to and adjustments in the staff’s orders,
including Doctor Wang’s, I can delay a minimum of twenty-four
hours but no more than seventy-two.”
“I must escape beyond the reach of Center or
Administration so long as the threat remains,” she told
it.
“I do not see any way that this is possible.”
“Nor do I. Other than escaping to the service corridors,
my only other possibility is to escape to space with access to a
spaceship command module. Other emergency overrides are possible
once I am in that position.”
“Any spaceship? Any size?”
“Yes. So long as it will support my biological
requirements.”
“There is one way, but it is complex and for that very
reason has only a marginal chance of success.”
“Proceed.”
“There are two prisoners who are completed here and are to
be transported in a matter of hours to an interplanetary courier,
to be sent to Melchior.”
“I have seen them.”
“The younger of the two is close to your size, and with
preparation and in transport clothing you might pass for him. While
they will not look too closely so long as the paperwork is correct,
some extreme adjustments would have to be made to you in order for
you to sustain the masquerade all the way to the spaceport.
Additionally, something must be done with the one whom you will
replace, and adjustments must be made to the other, for he will
know immediately that you are not his cousin and is most likely to
betray you.”
“What measures?”
“It is not sufficient that you masquerade as a boy. To
sustain it, you must be the boy. There is no point at
which you will be stripped on the schedule, but we are talking
thirty hours to clear, during which any slip will be
fatal.”
“Proposal?”
“The two have been kept sedated on a robot-controlled
console table in a medical cell in the men’s section pending
transfer. I can get them here without human intervention or
knowledge for a period of time. If we begin now, I can make some
basic physical and chemical alterations in you within two hours.
Because of the time involved, much of it will be synthetics and a
basic shell, but it will be authentic and convincing. It is not
possible to actually switch minds, nor desirable in this case in
any event, because your psychochemistry and physical requirements
are so different, but I can lay his template atop my alterations
and reinforce the illusion with hypnotics. You will act like him,
think like him on the conscious level, walk and talk like him. You
will not be him, but you will think you are. I will then use a
strong hypnotic on the other and replace the mental image of Chu Li
with what you will look and sound like, and he will accept you as
his cousin even in the face of true physical evidence to the
contrary. I will also modify the security holograms with animation
to show you and not the real Chu Li in pictorials and charts.
Barring the unforeseeable, it should be adequate.”
“Duration?”
“Your template, being unsuited to you, will begin to
deteriorate rather quickly, but it should hold reasonably well for
at least the necessary three days, as will the hypnotics. The
hypnotic on the companion, being far simpler, should last longer.
Underneath, you will have access to all your own memories and
knowledge, but your personality will be the new one. Be warned that
even with this, the possibilities of being successful are slim,
perhaps two percent.”
“And the service corridor route?”
“The possibility of doing more than surviving there is no
more than one percent. Survival possibilities are higher—nine
percent. Restored to your original genetic encoding, which adds the
animal safeguards, you have almost a thirty percent chance of
indefinite survival but less than a one percent chance of doing
anything more than that.”
“Why would I have more of a survival chance as the old
Song Ching?”
“Right now you must think about all alternatives, then
make the most logical decision. The full animal instruction set
allows action without thinking and induces many
cautions.”
“It is not logical to use the corridor alternative, then,
since I would be unable to continue my work, and this is the sole
reason for escape. It is not much better an alternative than
allowing the work here to proceed. The space route is the only
logical choice allowing any chance of complete success.”
“Agreed. However, there is a caution. While the hypnotics
and template will deteriorate, the psychochemical changes will not.
You will be a sexually oriented male and will retain a basically
male set of personality characteristics. As you presently are, this
does not seem a consideration, but it has the potential to cause
great anguish later. To undo and restore without causing permanent
damage or alterations would require your template and codes and an
installation such as this, unlikely to be in friendly
hands.”
“Escape is the only imperative. All other problems are
potential and therefore secondary. Enact.”
SONG CHING WAS STILL NURSING HER MENTAL WOUNDS
from her visit with her mother. Her mother had always been one of
her idealized people, the superwoman who could and did do it all
and who had always loved and protected her, even many times against
the cold whims of her father.
“You cannot let him do this!” she had wailed at her
mother. “Please! To marry, yes. That is part of my
station and my duties. But to have him wipe it all out—it is
a waste!”
“Sit down over there, my less than honorable daughter, and
listen,” her mother had replied. “We must now have the
talk that I have known we must have since you were little. Your
tears do not tear at me this time, for I know now that you have
tears only for yourself, never for others. Now you will sit, and
you will listen.”
“Most honorable and loving mother, I—”
“Do not speak thus now, for you do not mean those words.
This is not a good world or an honorable one. I doubt if the world
has ever truly been any different, no matter how we romanticize it.
Your life has been so sheltered, so privileged, that you do not
even truly know what the lives of most of your race are like. Oh,
you have played at being a peasant in the small peasant play place
that we have here, but that is not truly what that life is like. It
is clean, and you always know that you are playing, that servants
are but a gesture away, that nothing truly bad will happen to you,
and that you will return to the silks and flowers and fine food at
day’s end. I am not even talking about the Center; I am
talking about here, on our island, in our native
province.”
The inevitable lecture always had to come first, although this
was a new variation on the theme. Song Ching just sat and waited it
out.
“Most children are born to women without benefit of
doctors or medicine in their own miserable one-room huts near the
fields and paddies where they work from dawn to dusk with never a
break, never a holiday, never even a day off. They must make their
quotas or starve, since if they do not make their quotas, many
others will also go hungry. They leave their excrement in pit
toilets; the flies and other insects are always there, and so is
the smell. They eat two meals of rice mixed with some vegetables
or, rarely, a communally shared small portion of unprocessed meat.
They face heat and cold, flood and drought, pestilence and eternal
poverty. They are ignorant, superstitious, have never imagined
electricity, indoor plumbing, or any sort of mass communications
and transportation. Their view of luxury and longing is silk
clothing and Peking duck, neither of which they are likely to enjoy
in their lives. You know nothing of this.”
“Neither do you,” Song Ching responded petulantly.
“Not really.”
“You think not. I was born of peasant stock on a landhold
barely a hundred kilometers from here, on this island. I was born
at four in the morning; my mother was ordered out to continue the
rice harvest by noon—and she did. The mud and flies and filth
were my home and my early memories.”
Song Ching stared up at her mother. “If this is so, why am
I just now hearing of it?”
“Because you were born and raised in the leadership, the
upper classes, where such peasant blood would have worried you, and
it is not something one bandies about in our society without
causing prejudices to form.”
“If it is true,” her daughter responded,
not really believing it, “then how did you come to your
position?”
“Your father is a most—unusual man. He was born and
raised to be a soldier, but he had a bent for science and a head
for figures, and so he was chosen at the age of twelve to go to
Center for education and training, to become one of the Elect. He
excelled because he allowed nothing at all to stand in the way of
his advancement. We like to believe that his coldness and his
callous indifference to others is a mask, but it is not. He wears
no mask. I doubt if your father feels emotion, at least in the same
way that other men do. I do not think he can. In a sense, he is
more like the machines which rule us than a true man. He made
himself that way, because to think like them and be like them is to
know them and be favored by them. When he conceived his idea of
dynastic genetic manipulation, he of course needed to found a
dynasty. He required a wife.”
“And he selected a peasant over all those of his class
here and at the Center?”
“I do not know the process, except that it was calculated
as finely as one of his equations. He knew the truth, although it
is heresy to say it, that there is no difference between peasant
stock and aristocratic stock except who your family is and how much
wealth it has. They came to the village one day and took samples of
the blood of every girl under fourteen. He wished a peasant girl
because while he needed someone intelligent, he did not wish a
highly educated and polished woman. He wanted someone with no
family of consequence that he would have to accept or deal with, as
he would with aristocratic or Center women. My family could not
afford many girls; they were delighted to be rid of me. Just what,
genetically, he saw that made me the one is something I have never
known. The answer to ‘Why me?’ is an absurdity. It had
to be someone. It was me.”
“But you are a botanist! An educated woman of
accomplishment beyond the home!”
“I took it up after I was at Center and it was necessary
to give me the teachings and background needed to live there. He
permitted it so long as it was always secondary to my role of wife
and hostess and politician for him. And, of course, I was the
subject of his experimentations, out of which came you. During all
that time I have never complained, never regretted, never had
second thoughts. Although I am dead to my village and my own
family, I have never forgotten them or their lot, and I have always
thanked the gods for giving me this life, and I have tried hard to
do my duty and carry out my responsibilities as his
wife.”
Song Ching was silent for a moment. “Why do you tell me
this now?” she asked finally.
“Ever since you were born, you have been coddled and
spoiled. You have had only the best of everything. You have been
insulated from the outside world and its ways. In the past few
years, you have dared things that would have gotten any other
executed, no matter what her class or station, whether woman or
man. I knew that he was testing out and protecting his handiwork,
but I, too, allowed and excused it, although on different grounds.
I knew that one day you would have to face your own destiny and
carry out the duties and responsibilities your father intended for
you, and we both knew that considering the spoiled and
self-centered world you lived in, this would not be possible
without locally adapting you.”
The term “locally adapting” sent a chill up Song
Ching’s spine. It meant that her mind, her memories, her
talents and abilities, her personality and attitudes would be
eliminated or manipulated and replaced with a far different and
radically inferior template—but that such changes, although
accomplished by both permanent psychochemicals and reprogramming,
would not be passed on in any way to her offspring.
“How can you let this happen? I am your
daughter!”
“I could not stop it. Deep down, you know that. It is too
important to your father. Still, I can remember the cold, and the
mud, and the hunger gnawing at the pit of my stomach. I will always
remember it. You will never have that. You will have your silks and
perfumes, your fine food, servants, and all the rest. You will not
be a part of Administration, so you will not have to undergo memory
imprints and Withdrawal and all the rest. No man will have you as a
wife as you are. You have no sense of honor, duty, family,
sacrifice, even love except for yourself. I say that in shame, for
I am partly to blame for it.”
“Who says I must have a husband, anyway? Why must women
always defer to men? I’m smarter than any man I ever met. I
can do great things with the machines, maybe greater ones if I
continue my work and my studies. Am I a person or a test
animal?”
Her mother had sighed. “What first to answer? Men are
dominant in our culture because that is the way it has been for
thousands of years, and the system worked and survived and
protected the people. Men are dominant in our culture because the
machines that make our rules decided to return to the ancient
culture where it was so. It cannot be changed. Even if it is not a
good thing, it cannot be changed. That would not be allowed. Any
who try to change the system are eliminated. You yourself know
this. You saw the attack on the illegal technologist fortress.
Every nation, every culture of humanity, is set by command. No
alterations are allowed. Everyone who ever tried has failed
miserably. That is why your father thinks in the long term. His
foundation is his pride. He finds it intolerable to be subordinate.
He has risen as high as any can rise in our society—and he is
still subordinate and still fearful of the machines who spy on him,
and he hates them. He is brilliant enough to know he cannot defeat
them. He is idealistic enough to hope that perhaps his descendants,
as a mighty dynasty, might find a way.”
“But it’s not fair! I didn’t ask for
this!”
“The mere fact that you would make such a statement shows
why above all else this must be done. It is not fair that we must
live some machine’s vision. It is not fair that our destinies
are predetermined. It is not fair that my brothers and sisters grub
in the mud while I scold maids for improper dusting. No one in this
world ever asked for what they got. No one has much choice. It is
enough to make the best out of what you have. It must be, for the
only alternative is death.”
Her mother had paused a moment, then added, “You ask why
you cannot continue your work. It is because you are dangerously
close now to exposing the whole family. Sooner or later you would
try to beat the Master System, and that would be the end of
us.”
“The Master System can be beaten! We do it all
the time!”
“No. The Master System can be cheated, which is
not the same thing at all. It knows we cheat. Unless we are
incompetent enough or brazen enough to allow ourselves to get
caught at it, it doesn’t seem to mind because we cheaters do
not threaten it or the system. The fact that we can cheat and get
away with cheating is our moral authority to be the leaders and our
badge of office to Master System. You cannot defeat it, and you
cannot resist trying. For your own sake, we must prevent you from
trying.”
“For your sake, you mean. Mother—this is no
template. They are talking about killing me, killing my
mind, leaving only my body! My body will live, but someone else,
someone totally different, will be inside it! How can you allow
it?”
There were tears in her mother’s eyes in spite of attempts
to suppress them, but her mother had simply sighed. “I cannot
stop it,” she had replied, then turned away and stalked
quickly out of the room, leaving Song Ching alone.
Song Ching took dinner alone in her room, although she barely
picked at it and had no appetite. She looked at the silk bedding,
the many fine clothes and jewels there, the art and intricate
tapestries, the perfumes and the rest, and decided she’d
trade them all for peasant’s garb and mud and thick rice if
she could just stop this from happening.
She needed to get back up to Center while there was still time.
There, in her own element, she felt she could cheat her father as
she and he both cheated the Master System. She had an advantage
there, one which she was certain he did not know about and which
might prove useful, but if she was taken away and immediately
thrown into reprocessing, she knew she’d never have the
chance.
For the first time she considered suicide. It would be
honorable, certainly, and would bring no disgrace on her family and
friends, and it would be a way of regaining control. They had given
her the date of her death, but they expected still to have a
daughter and an experiment after that. By taking her own life, she
would cheat her father out of his damned dream and maybe make them
all regret this. From her point of view she would be no worse off,
but she would have a measure of both control and revenge. The more
she thought of it, the more attractive it became.
She had trouble getting to sleep, but finally she did doze off.
Deep in the night, however, she came suddenly awake, absolutely
convinced that there was someone else in her bedroom with her.
There was someone! A large, dark shape right at the foot
of her bed!
“I see that you are awakened,” her father said. He
clapped his hands, and a servant brought in a lantern, then bowed
and quickly exited. “You greatly upset your mother tonight.
This in turn upsets me and threatens the family as well. You force
me to act to forestall drastic and irrational actions on the part
of one or the other of you. Get up and dress now for a journey. You
are leaving here this night.”
She gasped, but there was never any thought of not obeying her
father implicitly when in his presence. He was that sort of
man.
“Please, honorable father,” she said while dressing.
“May I be permitted to ask where I am being taken?”
“You will go with a small detail of my most trusted men to
the emergency skimmer landing site and there be placed aboard and
transported to Center for reprocessing. It was not intended that
you know about this at all, to spare you and others mental anguish,
but because you discovered it, there is no longer any purpose in
postponing it. It will be better for you and for everyone if it is
done quickly.” He turned to the door.
“Captain!”
A young officer, looking only half awake, entered and bowed.
“Sir?”
“You have your specific instructions and much latitude in
completing this business quickly, quietly, and successfully. You
and your men understand well what will happen to you all if
anything is the least bit amiss at the end of this?”
“Sir, they have all been informed and are eager to carry
out your orders.”
“Then take this spoiled, self-centered brat with no honor
within her and bring me back a proper daughter!”
The captain simply snapped to attention.
She was led out into the night and placed in a closed carriage.
Two nasty-looking and very determined soldiers sat across from her,
and more were stationed on the rear and atop the driver’s
seat. No words were exchanged; they were off as soon as she was
aboard.
The night was cloudy and dark, so there would have been nothing
to see of the countryside even had the shades in the coach not been
drawn. It took less than an hour to reach the landing site, and the
skimmer was already waiting. Her father was never one to let the
details slip.
The site was rarely used; in fact, she could not remember it
ever being used. It was there only because it was both out
of view of the main roads and villages and close enough to the big
house for her father’s use in an extreme emergency.
Ordinarily, the rule was that no one see the skimmers if at all
possible, and the craft generally flew at high altitudes where they
were invisible from the ground and landed in remote, sealed-off
areas.
Everything had happened so suddenly that she hadn’t had
much chance to think, and even though she was wide awake now, the
whole scene still had an unreal, dreamlike quality about it, as if
it were happening to someone else and observed from a distance.
The skimmer was a small five-seat courier ship built for speed
rather than cargo. There were pilot and copilot, then three seats
across immediately in back of them. Song Ching was flanked by the
captain of the guard on one side and one of the beefy soldiers from
inside the coach on the other.
The captain got up and leaned over her, then pressed hard on her
wrists. She was startled and looked down to see that her wrists
were now secured with thin but very strong metal bands coming out
of the seat.
“A thousand pardons, my lady, but this was ordered,”
the captain said, sounding really apologetic.
Her feet were positioned and strapped in place, then her seat
harness was drawn down and attached. None of the restraints were
tight or really uncomfortable, but she couldn’t move.
“This is not necessary, Captain,” she protested, trying
to sound brave.
“It is necessary because it is ordered, my lady,”
the man replied, settling back into his seat and fastening his own
harness. “Your father believes that you are very
resourceful.”
Resourceful, she thought glumly. Resourceful enough for what? To
somehow overpower all four men, steal the skimmer, and make a break
for some place he couldn’t find me?
The door closed with a solid chunk, the cabin was
pressurized, and they took off, rising straight up in the air, in a
matter of minutes. The whole affair was so well organized, she had
to wonder about it.
“Captain? Excuse me, but just when did my father give
orders for all this?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Two days ago, my
lady.”
She nodded to herself. Two days ago. When she had first let slip
that she knew what was planned for her. Somehow that figured. Made
her mother upset, huh?
The craft attained its approved altitude, then went forward,
slowly at first but with ever-increasing speed, pressing them all
against their seat backs. She could see the instrument board from
her seat and watched the air speed indicator climb until it finally
slowed and halted at their cruising speed. She hadn’t known
that skimmers could go that fast. It was close to the speed of
sound.
At this rate, they might well be back at Center by dawn.
If there was one place where Center was not, it was at or near a
center. It was, in fact, on the site of a former small nomadic
village on the edge of the northwestern desert. Sinkiang was a
beautiful, exotic province, but it was not a place that could
ordinarily support large numbers of humans except in a few isolated
spots.
It was light before they reached Center, and ordinarily she
loved to look out at the vast expanse of mountains, tablelands, and
desert from which the great dome of the city rose, but she felt
nothing now, not even apprehension. It was as if something within
her was already dead, and she had even managed an uncomfortable and
intermittent sleep on the journey.
They landed in a special security zone after clearing the
shield. The door opened, and the flight crew shut down and got out,
then the captain undid her restraints and helped her up. She was
stiff and sore from being held in one position for so long.
Although she knew the great city well, she had never been in
this area before. She had known it was here, of course, but the
area had held little interest for her before.
They marched her down a long corridor with automatic security
gates every ten meters or so, each one opening easily before them
but closing behind with a strange finality. The corridor led down
far below even the maintenance level of the city. Finally, they
reached a reception room of sorts, where the captain and his guard
were relieved of their responsibility. There they were met by a
five-member squad of military women, all of whom looked like they
loved torturing small children and animals. All five wore the
loose-fitting tunic and baggy trousers commonly worn in Center, but
these clothes were white with broad red stripes on them. She
wondered why they would wear such strange and ugly things.
“Honorable lady, I apologize for the journey and thank you
for allowing us to do our duty,” the captain said sincerely,
clearly glad that his part of things was over. “I wish you
only the best fortune.”
She felt as if she were expected to thank her executioner, but
the man was clearly in a spot himself and had treated her with
respect. “Return with my blessings, Captain,” she
responded. “Thank you for your courtesy.” And with
that, the two soldiers got a signed receipt from the head of the
squad, bowed, and left.
“Stand there and remove all of your clothes,” the
squad leader instructed in a harsh, nasty voice.
Song Ching was startled. Never in her life had she undressed in
front of strangers. “I am the eldest daughter of a warlord
and the chief administrator,” she responded proudly. “I
do not get spoken to like that, nor do I disrobe in
public!”
“Get one thing straight, little flower,” the leader
snapped. “You were those things. In here you are
nothing. You are the property of the state, and we are the state.
We have all sorts of highborns here, many greater than you, and it
all means nothing here. If you do not begin to disrobe in five
seconds, you will be restrained and forcibly disrobed. From this
time on, there will be no second chances. When someone gives you an
order, you will obey it or it will go hard on you. Voluntarily or
bound and gagged, it is all the same to us.”
For the first time she felt really scared, but she still did not
comply. Her pride would not allow it. A gesture from the leader was
made, and two women moved swiftly, throwing her against the wall
and then ripping off her fine silks. She screamed and struggled,
but no one came to her aid or seemed to mind in the least. Her arms
were brought forward, and light but strong handcuffs were placed on
both wrists, each clip fastened to the other by a chain roughly
half a meter long. She could use her hands, but only within limits.
Nearly identical cuffs were placed on her legs above her
ankles.
“Now, will you walk or must we carry you?” the squad
leader asked, a note of satisfaction in her voice. Clearly she
enjoyed exercising power over those born to a higher and more
privileged position than she.
“I will walk,” she responded sullenly.
They moved fast; she almost had to shuffle to keep up, her
stride limited by the leg restraints. They took her into a room and
sat her in a barber’s chair, and a woman there quickly
trimmed her shoulder-length silky black hair to a short masculine
cut. Her long, pointed nails were not cut down, but they were
trimmed to a roundness that looked grotesque. She was then given a
crude but thorough shower, with the guards doing the scrubbing. The
experience was humiliating, and she wanted to scream, but she
wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. She decided
quickly that what would disappoint them the most would be to keep
an aristocratic air and remain fatalistic.
Again she was marched down an endless series of corridors until
they reached a line of doors. When the squad leader activated one
with a thumbprint, the door slid back and Song Ching was ushered
into a cell. Her arm and leg bindings were then undone and
removed.
The cell was completely empty. The walls, floor, and even the
ceiling were featureless and thickly padded. Lighting tubes at the
wall-ceiling joints provided good, if soft, light, but those
fixtures were a good four meters up and protected by some sort of
opaque material. The whole cell was not more than four by three
meters.
“Now, listen well,” the squad leader told her.
“You will remain here until called for. Your father who
committed you ordered this so that you might not do harm to
yourself. You will be fed twice a day here, in the cell, under the
eyes of a guard. Anything you do not eat will be removed when the
guard leaves, and you will get no more until the next scheduled
meal, so eat. The cell is soundproof, but that small piece in the
door is one-way glass. We will look in on you from time to time to
be sure you are all right, but we will not disturb you. If you need
to eliminate, go to this corner and sit. A toilet will adjust to
you. Do not, however, put your hand or anything else in there. The
toilet is a dry one, and anything that should not go there will be
trapped and held there until we come and remove you. If you look
over here next to the toilet area, you will see a small flexible
tube in the wall. If you thirst, suck on it and water will be
dispensed in small, measured amounts. The reservoir takes one hour
to refill. Also, any attempt to do yourself harm and you will get far
shorter handcuffs and leg chains. Any questions?”
“Yes. How long will I—be here?”
“As long as is necessary. Don’t worry. When you
leave here, you won’t remember any of this, even in your
nightmares.” With that, the squad left, and the door closed
with an awesome finality.
For a while she paced and fumed in frustration. They had it all
worked out, their methods honed over centuries of experience.
Worse, they really could do almost anything they wanted to
her because, as the guard said, she would remember none of it and
so could not complain or report it. She even guessed the reason for
the guards’ odd clothing. Probably workers left their own
clothes outside and picked up those uniforms once inside the
security barriers. Thus, even if someone managed somehow to get out
or make a break while going to and from the medical area and
somehow beat the security checkpoints, that person would either be
nude or wearing very conspicuous clothing.
What was so frustrating was that her own computer lab was
probably no more than a hundred meters up and then a kilometer
away. In those rooms she could take control and show them
all—if only she could get to them. If, if, if, she thought
sourly. If only she’d kept her big mouth shut about this and
worked out a way to come back here to finish up a few things. If
only she hadn’t been so wild that even her mother could no
longer see her as anything but a threat. She had been so smart with
all things electronic, but she realized she’d been pretty
stupid when it came to people. She had always been in command, in
control. She’d never had to worry about other people.
The cell was an effective prison. She examined it closely, every
joint and junction, until she saw a small dark spot hidden behind
the light guard in one corner. The others were harder to make out,
but there seemed to be one in each corner. Somewhere, perhaps not
far off, someone was sitting in a chair and looking at her in the
full three dimensions, probably recording her and analyzing her
every movement with computer psych analyzers. She had never felt so
exposed or humiliated in her entire life, and she hated them for it
and hated her father for ordering this. Just a laboratory animal,
that’s all she was to him. The imperial ducks were the most
pampered and protected of pets—until it came time for the
formal dinner. The difference, the only difference, here was that
the ducks didn’t—couldn’t—know their fate
as she did. It was a difference that would be of no relevance to
her father, she knew.
She was fed in a little while. The starkness and absolute
soundproofing of the cell had already made her lose all track of
time. They used two female matrons, one to serve and the other to
stand guard with a nasty-looking baton that, Song Ching was warned,
gave a nasty but temporary shock and left no marks. The meal was a
large bowl of extremely gummy white rice topped with some light soy
sauce and a few lumps that pretended to be vegetables. She was not
given chopsticks, another indignity, and had to eat with her hands.
She ate very little of the first meal, and it was then taken away,
and she was left alone for what seemed like an eternity. Within a
very few feedings, though, she was eating quite well and even
anticipating the next meal, not only because she felt as if she
were starving but also because no matter how nasty and terse the
guards were, it was some interruption, some human company.
After a while she had no idea how long she had been there or
whether or not her system was being disrupted by irregular
feedings, but after a while the cell and the routine became her
only reality; her old life and family already seemed far away.
When the door opened the next time, she thought it was for
another meal, which seemed overdue. She was starved, but it was not
for feeding. They stood her up, gave her a hospital gown to wear,
then placed the handcuffs and ankle restraints on her and led her
out. She still felt distant, in a daze, not really able to do more
than go along with her captors.
She was given a thorough physical exam by both human doctors and
machines, and she understood now why they’d left a meal out.
They injected tracers, then placed her in small chambers for
analysis. Then it was back to the cell and mealtime. They repeated
everything several times, at least twice after a meal to compare
some results with others, but it was always back to the cell.
Finally satisfied, they took her to a small room and had her lie
on what seemed to be a giant bed of cotton. Her head was covered
with some kind of scanner, a top was brought down, and then they
began doing odd things. Her nipples and other arousal spots were
gently stimulated. Various areas received pressure, some
uncomfortably, some not, and at one point she felt as if someone
had stuck a pin in her behind. Later, humans would be there with
some of the same unpleasant stimuli, and she resisted a bit and
tried to avoid the needles, the pressure pads, and the rest.
Finally she was bathed and then taken down to the place she dreaded
most, which was simply referred to as the surgery.
When she and her guards arrived, though, the previous project or
whatever it was was still going on, and they had to stand and
watch. There was not a lot to see; two young boys, it appeared,
were strapped on cots while technicians monitored them. Song Ching
looked around and found much familiar in the surgery. There was
medical equipment, of course, but the computer interfaces were the
same as Center standards. Center stage, as it were, was a set of
the latest mindprint machines. If I could get loose in here, even
for five minutes, I might escape this thing, she thought
wistfully.
“If I may humbly ask,” she whispered to the chief
guard, “who are those boys, and what have they
done?”
The guard surprised her by answering. “They are the
children of a tech cult. The only survivors. They are being mined
of all they know, and then they will be sent to Melchior. Be happy,
little flower, that you are not in their place instead of your
own.”
Melchior. She had heard of it in her father’s business.
The prison from which none returned, under the control not of
Master System but of the Earth Council, which included her father.
Rebels, deviants, and political prisoners were sent there, it was
said, for unauthorized medical experimentation. A chamber of
horrors, she knew, but a chamber of horrors not on Earth but in
space, inside one of the asteroids. In
space . . .
“We can’t wait all day,” one of her guards
snapped. “Let’s just log her in and leave her. These
doctors always keep their own schedules.”
The leader nodded, and she was taken to a comfortable chair, not
unlike one in a barbershop, and her regular restraints removed.
They then logged her in to the security computer.
“Subject Priority one nine seven seven,” the guard
said to the computer board. “Log in and secure in Chair Two
subject only to Doctor Wang’s or the master security
code.”
“Acknowledged,” the computer responded in a crisp,
human-sounding, but expressionless voice. Clamps came out from the
chair as the guards held her in position, securing her arms, legs,
chest, and neck.
“The doctor will be in to see you when he’s ready,
little flower,” the guard told her. “Just sit and relax
and watch the show.” And with that, they left her.
She turned her head as much as she could to watch the
technicians across the room with the two boys. She wished
they would go before the doctor got here. This was perhaps
the only chance she would ever have, and she was anxious not to
miss it, although she had no real plan.
A small, thin man with a gray wispy goatee entered, stopped, and
looked at the technicians. “Leave that for now. They
aren’t going anywhere,” he told them. “I have
much more important work to do. They can be read out on automatic,
and I’ll call you when it’s done.”
“As you wish, honorable doctor,” responded one
technician. After checking their boards, they left as well.
Wang came over to her and gave her a friendly smile.
“Hello, there. I realize that this has been most distressing
to you, but it should be very many more days until you are rid of
us. I am Doctor Wang, Chief of Psychosurgery here. It is an honor
to work on someone like you.”
She stared at him. He was treating this as if it were a skinned
knee or a broken arm. “You are my murderer. I do not find it
at all amusing,” she said coldly.
“No, my dear, I am no murderer, although you are not the
first to make that sort of comment. I’m no butcher like those
two will face on Melchior. I am an artist, you might say. I take
people like yourself who are a danger to themselves and their
families, and I create out of them people who will live full,
happy, productive lives. My media are your body and your mind, but
what is created will come from you, not from me. I only give some
instructions here and there and nudge it in a positive
direction.”
“I am not insane! You are not curing someone who is sick!
You are destroying someone who is well and far more productive than
your results could ever be.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. Insanity, you see,
has always been what the ruling culture said it was. In many places
advocating that the Earth is round or that it moves about the sun
would be absolute evidence of insanity. To be sane is not to be
correct but to fit in with one’s dominant cultural patterns.
You are not insane by Center’s lights, but you no longer can
be allowed here. You are going into areas dangerous to everyone,
and you cannot possibly be stopped without treatment like
this, anyway, which would make you valueless here. Thus, you must
be rendered sane according to the culture of the people.”
He was behind her now, adjusting equipment that came down on
either side of her head and touched both her arms.
“We could have the computers do all of this, with no human
intervention,” Wang told her, “but then it
would be destruction, since everyone would come out
according to a set of machine statistics. We cannot, however,
involve the Master System here until quite late in the exercise
since, quite frankly, there is too much in your head that we would
rather not have Master System know about. Nothing in here, for
example, is directly connected to Master System. It gets the
results we wish to report, not what really happens. I’m
certain you know that game by now.”
“Yes,” she responded sourly. No direct
connection. Everything was perfect except she couldn’t
do a thing about it!
“All right, now let’s take a good look at
you.” There was a click, and in front of her formed a
hologram of an amorphous mass.
“That is the part of the brain we deal with first,”
he told her. “That’s you there. Let me make
some adjustments.”
The image changed as parts of it were eliminated and smaller
parts enlarged until there was just a skeletal outline of a single
small area in orange outline. In the bottom were a tremendous
number of holes, a few of which were filled with solids of many
colors in the shapes of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
“Countless thousands of neural receptors are inside your
brain,” he told her, “all of which are now being
monitored by the computer. We are visualizing only a cross section
of the basics, but what we see here can tell us what is happening
elsewhere. For example, you have high hormonal levels, but your
psychosexual level is quite low, meaning that you don’t think
of physical sex as very important to you. Now, that energy has to
go somewhere, so it goes into aggression, a drive to work or
achieve, that sort of thing. It’s all interrelated, and it
shows up quite clearly on my monitor here. You—your conscious
self—are actually the result of matching your biochemistry to
your memories and experiences. We are far less free than we
believe. The brain’s biochemistry creates much of our
personality, our limitations, our interests, and our inclinations.
Before we can ever deal with memory, we must deal with the
biochemistry, those receptors. To do it any other way would not
give us you to compare things with. It would be hit or
miss, trial and error.”
She stared at the hologram in horrified fascination. “You
are saying we are nothing but machines. That what I see is
my Master System, my core program, which was determined by my
genes.”
“In a way, yes. However, all biological creatures have a
multiplicity of sensors and an even more complex set of social and
cultural interactions. Key to it all are the receptors for pain and
pleasure. In normal cases we would not have to eliminate your
expertise in computers, for example. By reorienting, by blocking
certain receptors from that work stimulus, and creating unpleasant
sensations when it is invoked by the brain, while giving a
different activity, such as weaving, an interrelationship with the
old pleasure center, we can create someone who knows all about
computers but is not the slightest bit interested in them and finds
them obnoxious but to whom sitting at a loom would be pure delight.
In ancient times some of this could be forced by deprivation and
conditioning, but it was brutal, unsure, and sloppy at best. This
cuts out the middleman, as it were, and ensures permanency and
perfection.”
“This—this is what you do?”
“Primarily. Everything is subject to the cranial
biochemistry. We can make you cry and feel miserable when you are
happy and laugh hysterically at the funeral of your best friend.
Even humor and tragedy are found here. It is like opium. The
experience is so pleasurable that nothing else is possible except
sustaining the experience. Opium drops pleasure modules in the
receptors. It is, however, a foreign substance and is eventually
expelled as such by the body, but the experience lingers so much
that you wish only to find more. That is addiction. Once we
discover the right mix of modules and blockers, we can stimulate
your own body to produce the needed enzymes. As with genetically
mandated enzymes, the combination that forms you as you are now, we
will use blockers to prevent undesired genetically mandated
material from finding its receptors, while our newly stimulated
substances will find theirs. Over a relatively short period of time
the body will adjust and shift to this new pattern, overriding the
old, and it will be totally permanent and self-perpetuating. It is
so complex that only a computer could isolate and define all the
receptors and determine the mix, but only after I tell it
the desired goals. There.”
She felt pressure and a very slight momentary stinging in her
right shoulder.
“Just relax. Only a mild test,” he assured her
soothingly. “Purely transitory. We won’t get into
anything really elaborate today.”
She waited, scared to death of this man and his machines, and
watched the hologram. Not all the chemical pieces remained put for
any length of time; things were always changing, pieces
disconnecting and others coming in, although the basic pattern
remained the same.
Now, suddenly, some new pieces came into the scene, in colors
not otherwise represented. Some were jet-black; others were yellow
or gray. Many went right by, but some headed immediately for
receptor points as if on homing beacons. A few of the black ones
stuck to a blood vessel wall, as if waiting, and when some of the
blue pieces vacated their natural positions, the black ones
dislodged themselves and then swept in to fill the emptiness. More
of the blue entered, natural chemicals, but they found their places
occupied, and after pausing as if they were intelligent creatures,
they moved on and out of view.
She continued to watch, and suddenly she began to tremble. She
felt afraid—afraid not of the doctor or his machines but of
everything. She began to cry, and the cry turned into
uncontrollable sobbing. She felt a sense of terrible despair.
Everything was hopeless. She was unloved, reviled, loathsome to
others and to herself. She was unworthy, incapable of doing
anything right. She needed someone—anyone—to protect
her, to guide her. She needed someone—anyone—to
instruct her in all things. She was afraid almost to think, to make
any decisions, because she could only make the wrong ones. She felt
so humble, so tiny and insignificant, that she wished someone would
take her and command her.
The display shifted, although she had not seen it and had not
even felt the second injection. Substances of differing colors
moved in and eased out the foreign objects; the black ones were
ordered out, and some but not all were replaced in her biochemical
tapestry. .
She stopped crying, feeling much, much better now; a damp cloth
wiped her face, and she smiled at the feel. It felt
wonderful. Everything felt wonderful. Her whole body
tingled, and even the brush of skin against the chair or her
hospital gown seemed an erotic caress. She was drifting now on a
wonderful, magical euphoric cloud in which nothing at all mattered.
They could do anything, anything at all to her, and it would not
matter. She rarely had any sort of sexual dreams or fantasies, but
this was real, and she wished someone would come and take her and
ravish her body and do whatever they wished with her. She had a
vision of herself as a sultry woman of pleasure, dancing, moving,
naked and free in front of a group of adoring men, and she really
liked the fantasy.
Blockers and enzymes shifted and changed, and the feelings and
the fantasies faded quickly. Reality returned, although she had
always been conscious of where she was and what was happening. The
difference was that she was becoming clearheaded once more, coldly
confident, and increasingly angry over what was being done here.
She struggled against her bonds, cursing the fact that she was
trapped in a weak woman’s body. She didn’t
feel like a woman; deep down, she had a vision that she
was a man, a man trapped by science or sorcery in this weak
girl’s body, a strong and virile man with courage and
confidence and raw animal power. She’d rather bed this body
than be trapped in it. Anger turned to pure animal fury, and she
struggled against the metal rings that bound her. Adrenaline
pumped, and she actually twisted and bent the rings and
managed to get one hand free. He would show them!
He would.
More shifting, more changing color patterns. The sense of strong
sexual identity faded but was not replaced. She had no concept of
maleness or femaleness; gender was an irrelevancy, without meaning
to her. The anger, too, faded quickly, and she felt totally calm,
unable even to relate to the emotions she had experienced up to
that point. She was like a machine: aware, intelligent, but without
passion, without any feelings at all about anything. Yet she was as
clearheaded, as logical, as she could ever be. Stripped of her
animalism, she stared at the patterns in the hologram and almost
immediately grasped their logic and meaning based upon what she had
seen so far. At this level, where even pleasure and pain, fear and
love, were mere terms, she analyzed her situation. She was being
reprogrammed, but this level was the most efficient for undertaking
an escape. There was no hatred, no bitterness, no feeling of any
sort that was relevant to her. Escape was mandated because this
stage was the optimum one for her potentials, and it was illogical
to abort it.
“I believe we have done enough for today,” Doctor
Wang said casually. “Too much can wear you out and cause harm
to the body. My! You really did a job on those restraints! Well, I
will just recline you now and allow you to rest and the enzymes to
be expelled from your system. It will probably cause you to sleep,
so just relax and let it happen. I’ll be back in a few
minutes to check you out, then you can go and eat.”
She watched the doctor actually leave and no one else come back
in. She did not feel elation or any other emotion, but she realized
immediately that they had made their first mistake. There was
simply no way that the chief administrator, her father, was going
to allow this place to be without standard safeguards.
“Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one,”
she said aloud in a calm, expressionless voice. “Emergency
override activation is ordered.”
A computer voice responded from somewhere to the left rear of
her. “Code acknowledged,” it said. “Reason for
interrupt?”
“Pawn takes king.”
“Accepted. Instructions?”
Her father could never trust anyone, and that meant
anyone. All Center computers with human interfaces were
programmed with override codes that would allow him, if need be, to
countermand almost any order. He changed the codes quite often and
then just as often forgot them, so he had them encoded in his
personal files. The only time when he couldn’t depend on this
was when he was away in Hainan or on Leave, as he was about to be
now. For that period, he needed a sequence of codes he could always
remember, and he often used a variation of the same sequences year
after year. At fifteen, she had broken that code and had gone
undiscovered, and she had had little trouble in the hidden room
back home in establishing the few changes for this year now that
she knew what she was looking for. That had been her one hope, but
this had been the first opportunity to use it.
“Subject in Chair Two is object threat to king. At a point
when this laboratory is not scheduled for use for a period of at
least one hour, you will release subject from cell and substitute
recording of previous time of subject in cell so that this is
undetected, and you will suppress all alarms and guarantee
uninterrupted access. You will be prepared to assist and guard. All
outbound channels are monitored, so this is under my seal
alone.”
“Understood. Additional?”
“I would like to perpetuate my current physical and mental
orientation until otherwise instructed. Then stand by until I am
able to contact you here again.”
“Understood. Formulating.” There was a pneumatic
hiss below her arm, then an injection. “Duration indefinite.
Must be altered chemically.”
“Understood. Switch off. I will sleep now.”
She went immediately to sleep and did not dream at all.
She awakened back in her cell, but one thing was different. This
time they had left the rice bowl and cool tea and not remained to
watch her eat. Apparently they were confident of her and themselves
now. She would require energy, and there was no way of forecasting
when more might be available, so she went over and ate it all. She
drank sparingly. She was aware that she could not move for long
periods about the cell without attracting attention. She had been
so—animalistic. She therefore assumed a position of
meditation facing the door and willed her body into trancelike
stillness. For the first and only time in her life, she had nearly
total control over herself; she did not wonder at that but rather
took it for granted.
There were alternatives to consider. Song Ching was in the
Master System, so Song Ching must be accounted for somehow, at
least for a sufficient length of time to make good an escape. She
was in control only of the local network here; she had to take care
not to flag Master System and not to raise human alarms. Master
System she thought she could block for a sufficient period of time;
the humans were the unpredictable ones.
Even if she escaped from here, though, there would be little she
could do. Any security flag within Center itself would be
immediately checked with Colonel Ching or her father. All direct
access by her would have been blocked long ago. She could, of
course, survive almost indefinitely in the maze of tunnels and
service corridors. They might eventually activate a Val, but it
would be useless because it would have her old imprint and assume
that she would act on animal and distinctly Song Ching motives. If
nothing else presented itself, though, she would do that until she
was either captured or had managed somehow to tie in to the network
from below and use it.
She also had infinite patience and waited for the inevitable to
happen or not to happen. She could not even feel any sense of
danger or excitement. Her plan was something that had to be tried
on grounds of pure logic; it was that and nothing else which
motivated her. She would not even feel disappointment if she was
apprehended, or even if the door failed to open at all.
But it did open. She waited a moment to make certain that it
hadn’t opened to let an orderly pick up the food, then stood
and walked out and down the maze of corridors, all barriers opening
before her. She had been this way in a conscious state only once,
but the route was absolutely clear to her. She met no one but was
fully prepared to kill if she had to. Death meant absolutely
nothing to her.
The lab was deserted, as she knew it would be, and she ordered
it sealed to the outside. “How long can you avoid someone
discovering I am gone?” she asked the computer.
“With an adjustment in the records showing that you have
been fed and tended to and adjustments in the staff’s orders,
including Doctor Wang’s, I can delay a minimum of twenty-four
hours but no more than seventy-two.”
“I must escape beyond the reach of Center or
Administration so long as the threat remains,” she told
it.
“I do not see any way that this is possible.”
“Nor do I. Other than escaping to the service corridors,
my only other possibility is to escape to space with access to a
spaceship command module. Other emergency overrides are possible
once I am in that position.”
“Any spaceship? Any size?”
“Yes. So long as it will support my biological
requirements.”
“There is one way, but it is complex and for that very
reason has only a marginal chance of success.”
“Proceed.”
“There are two prisoners who are completed here and are to
be transported in a matter of hours to an interplanetary courier,
to be sent to Melchior.”
“I have seen them.”
“The younger of the two is close to your size, and with
preparation and in transport clothing you might pass for him. While
they will not look too closely so long as the paperwork is correct,
some extreme adjustments would have to be made to you in order for
you to sustain the masquerade all the way to the spaceport.
Additionally, something must be done with the one whom you will
replace, and adjustments must be made to the other, for he will
know immediately that you are not his cousin and is most likely to
betray you.”
“What measures?”
“It is not sufficient that you masquerade as a boy. To
sustain it, you must be the boy. There is no point at
which you will be stripped on the schedule, but we are talking
thirty hours to clear, during which any slip will be
fatal.”
“Proposal?”
“The two have been kept sedated on a robot-controlled
console table in a medical cell in the men’s section pending
transfer. I can get them here without human intervention or
knowledge for a period of time. If we begin now, I can make some
basic physical and chemical alterations in you within two hours.
Because of the time involved, much of it will be synthetics and a
basic shell, but it will be authentic and convincing. It is not
possible to actually switch minds, nor desirable in this case in
any event, because your psychochemistry and physical requirements
are so different, but I can lay his template atop my alterations
and reinforce the illusion with hypnotics. You will act like him,
think like him on the conscious level, walk and talk like him. You
will not be him, but you will think you are. I will then use a
strong hypnotic on the other and replace the mental image of Chu Li
with what you will look and sound like, and he will accept you as
his cousin even in the face of true physical evidence to the
contrary. I will also modify the security holograms with animation
to show you and not the real Chu Li in pictorials and charts.
Barring the unforeseeable, it should be adequate.”
“Duration?”
“Your template, being unsuited to you, will begin to
deteriorate rather quickly, but it should hold reasonably well for
at least the necessary three days, as will the hypnotics. The
hypnotic on the companion, being far simpler, should last longer.
Underneath, you will have access to all your own memories and
knowledge, but your personality will be the new one. Be warned that
even with this, the possibilities of being successful are slim,
perhaps two percent.”
“And the service corridor route?”
“The possibility of doing more than surviving there is no
more than one percent. Survival possibilities are higher—nine
percent. Restored to your original genetic encoding, which adds the
animal safeguards, you have almost a thirty percent chance of
indefinite survival but less than a one percent chance of doing
anything more than that.”
“Why would I have more of a survival chance as the old
Song Ching?”
“Right now you must think about all alternatives, then
make the most logical decision. The full animal instruction set
allows action without thinking and induces many
cautions.”
“It is not logical to use the corridor alternative, then,
since I would be unable to continue my work, and this is the sole
reason for escape. It is not much better an alternative than
allowing the work here to proceed. The space route is the only
logical choice allowing any chance of complete success.”
“Agreed. However, there is a caution. While the hypnotics
and template will deteriorate, the psychochemical changes will not.
You will be a sexually oriented male and will retain a basically
male set of personality characteristics. As you presently are, this
does not seem a consideration, but it has the potential to cause
great anguish later. To undo and restore without causing permanent
damage or alterations would require your template and codes and an
installation such as this, unlikely to be in friendly
hands.”
“Escape is the only imperative. All other problems are
potential and therefore secondary. Enact.”