shuddering brain.
Yet if Dahak had lacked the imagination to project the consequences, he was a very fast learner, and his memory banks contained a vast amount of information on trauma. He had withdrawn from MacIntyre’s consciousness and used the sickbay’s emergency medical over-rides to damp his sensory channels and draw him back from the quivering brink of insanity, then combined sedative drugs and soothing sonic therapy to keep him there.
Dahak had driven his terror back without clouding his intellect, and then— excruciatingly slowly to his tormented senses and yet with dazzling rapidity by the standards of the universe—had helped him come to grips with the radically changed environment of his own body. The horror of the neural implants had faded. Dahak was no longer a terrifying alien presence whispering in his brain; he was a friend and mentor, teaching him to adjust and control his newfound abilities until he was their master and not their victim.
But for all Dahak’s speed and adaptability, it had been a near thing, and they both knew it. The experience had made Dahak a bit more cautious, but, even more importantly, it had taught MacIntyre that Dahak had limits. He could not assume the machine always knew what it was doing or rely upon it to save him from the consequences of his own folly. The lesson had stuck, and when he emerged from his trauma he discovered that he was the captain, willing to be advised and counseled by his inorganic henchman and crew but starkly aware that his life and fate were as much in his own hands as they had ever been.
It was a frightening thought, but Dahak had been right; MacIntyre had a command mentality. He preferred the possibility of sending himself to hell to the possibility of being condemned to heaven by another, which might not speak well for his humility but meant he could survive—so far, at least—what Dahak demanded of him. He might castigate the computer as a harsh taskmaster, but he knew he was driving himself at least as hard and as fast as Dahak might have.
He sighed again, slumping back in the water as the painful cramp subsided at last. Thank God! Cramps had been bad enough when only his own muscles were involved, but they were pure, distilled hell now. And it seemed a bit unfair his magic muscles could not simply spring full blown from Dahak’s brow, as it were. The computer had never warned him they would require exercise just as implacably as the muscle tissues nature had intended him to have, and he felt vaguely cheated by the discovery. Relieved, but cheated.
Of course, the mutineers would feel cheated if they knew everything he’d gotten, for Dahak had spent the last few centuries making “minor” improvements to the standard Fleet implants. MacIntyre suspected the computer had seen it as little more than a way to pass the time, but the results were formidable. He’d started out with a bridge officer’s implants, which were already far more sophisticated than the standard Fleet biotechnics, but Dahak had tinkered with almost all of them. He was not only much stronger and tougher, and marginally faster, than any mutineer could possibly be, but the range and acuity of his electronic and enhanced physical senses were two or three hundred percent better. He knew they were, for Dahak had demonstrated by stepping his own implants’ capabilities down to match those of the mutineers.
He closed his eyes and relaxed, smiling faintly as his body half-floated. He’d assumed all those modifications would increase his weight vastly, yet they hadn’t. His body density had gone up dramatically, but the Fourth Imperium’s synthetics were unbelievably light for their strength. His implants had added no more than fifteen kilos—and he’d sweated off at least that much fat in return, he thought wryly.
“Dahak,” he said without opening his eyes.
“Yes, Colin?”
MacIntyre’s smile deepened at the form of address. That was another thing Dahak had resisted, but MacIntyre was damned if he was going to be called “Captain” and “Sir” every time his solitary subordinate spoke to him, even if he did command a starship a quarter the size of his homeworld.
“What’s the status on the search mission?”
“They have recovered many fragments from the crash site, including the serial number plates we detached from your craft. Colonel Tillotson remains dissatisfied by the absence of any organic remains, but General Yakolev has decided to terminate operations.”
“Good,” MacIntyre grunted, and wondered if he meant it. The Joint Command crash investigation had dragged on longer than expected, and he was touched by Sandy’s determination to find “him,” but he thought he was truly relieved it was over. It was a bit frightening, like the snipping of his last umbilical, but it had to happen if he and Dahak were to have a chance of success.
“Any sign of a reaction from Anu’s people?”
“None,” Dahak replied. There was a brief pause, and then the computer went on just a bit plaintively. “Colin, you could acquire data much more rapidly if you would simply rely upon your neural interface.”
“Humor me,” MacIntyre said, opening one eye and watching clouds drift across his atrium’s projected sky. “And don’t tell me your other crews used their implants all the time, either, because I don’t believe it.”
“No,” Dahak admitted, “but they made much greater use of them than you do. Vocalization is often necessary for deliberate cognitive manipulation of data, Colin-human thought processes are, after all, inextricably bound up in and focused by syntax and semantics—yet it can be a cumbersome process, and it is not an efficient way to acquire data.”
“Dahak,” MacIntyre said patiently, “you could dump your whole damn memory core into my brain through this implant—”
“Incorrect, Colin. The capacity of your brain is severely limited. I calculate that no more than—”
“Shut up,” Colin said with a reluctant twinkle. If Dahak’s long sojourn in Earth orbit hadn’t made him truly human, it had come close in many ways. He rather doubted Comp Cent’s designers had meant Dahak to have a sense of humor.
“Yes, Colin,” Dahak said so meekly that MacIntyre knew the computer was indulging in the electronic equivalent of silent laughter.
“Thank you. Now, what I meant is that you can pour information into my brain with a funnel, but that doesn’t make it mine. It’s like a … an encyclopedia. It’s a reference source to look things up in, not something that pops into my mind when I need it. Besides, it tickles.”
“Human brain tissue is not susceptible to physical sensation, Colin,” Dahak said rather primly.
“I speak symbolically,” MacIntyre replied, pushing a wave across his tub and wiggling his toes. “Consider it a psychosomatic manifestation.”
“I do not understand psychosomatic phenomena,” Dahak reminded him.
“Then just take my word for it. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but until I do, I’ll go right on asking questions. Rank, after all, hath its privileges.”
“I suppose you think that concept is unique to your own culture.”
“You suppose wrongly. Unless I miss my guess, it’s endemic to the human condition, wherever the humans came from.”
“That has been my own observation.”
“You cannot imagine how much that reassures me, oh Dahak.”
“Of course I cannot. Many things humans find reassuring defy logical analysis.”
“True, true.” MacIntyre consulted the ship’s chronometer through his implant and sighed resignedly. His rest period was about over, and it was time for his next session with the fire control simulator. After that, he was due on the hand weapon range, followed by a few relaxing hours acquiring the rudiments of supralight astrogation and ending with two hours working out against one of Dahak’s hand-to-hand combat training remotes. If rank had its privileges, it also had its obligations. Now there was a profound thought.
He climbed out and wrapped himself in a thick towel. He could have asked
