The Sea is Full of Stars

and even tapered in. Her face was fine, but as hairless as Angel’s, and she didn’t seem to have eyebrows.

Angel realized that she must look essentially the same, and in the same kind of outfit. She had a long enough neck to be able to get at least some sense of herself.

“So, we’re talking heads,” Angel said.

Ming gave a dry chuckle. “Well, at least we can feel assured that nobody is going to rape us, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Mister Big didn’t try and ensure that we felt entirely helpless and victimized. He gets off on that.” She sighed. “I’m sorry you got sucked into this. I’m sorry I didn’t get on that boat myself. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, but I just never expected Ari to blow me away like that. I’ve known him since university, for Heaven’s sake! Of all the people I might have thought would be my enemy, he would be just a bit higher than my own family.”

“I know how it must hurt,” Angel told her. “Still, I sense the conflict in him. Who knows how he might be if he were ever outside of that evil man’s influence?”

“Fat lot of good that’s going to do us,” Ming noted. “He didn’t need to do this to us. We weren’t going anywhere. He did it deliberately, not only to leave us helpless, but also because he knows how people like me are trained, and he saw the video of you outmaneuvering Tann Nakitt—who, I must tell you, is in trouble himself here someplace because he decided to cast his lot with you, although I think he might have in any event. I wonder what happened to him?”

“Probably being defanged and declawed,” Angel guessed.

“Do not underestimate him. Still, what can any of us do here? Where would we go?”

Angel thought about that. “What do you think they will do with us?”

“Play with us. Terrorize and victimize us if we give them any satisfaction. And then they’ll try and break you. Me, I think, they’ll just go directly for a mindscrub.”

“You mean like the Rehabilitation Centers?” Angel was aghast.

“Yes, the ones for the worst offenders and those who cannot be let back into civilized company. They wire up your brain, send in their signals and probes, download what they find in your thinking parts, and then they erase. Then you get reprogrammed by uploading a very simple routine, after which you’ll be happy and smiling and totally obedient and do and think and believe everything your trainer tells you. You’ll have no memory of who or what you were, and no curiosity about it, either. If you have anything valuable and unique, or might be useful as your old self, they might take the download and create a virtual mind in the computer, then catalog, categorize, rearrange, pick and choose. It is tricky to do, but it’s done all the time. It’s known as a ‘turnaround’ in the psychiatric trade. I doubt if they’ll try it with me, though. We’re regularly tested each time the passwords and authorities are changed, which is often, and it has never been undetectable.”

“It sounds like killing the soul but leaving the body intact. It is the most immoral thing I have ever heard,” Angel told her. “How can we stop this?”

“Honey,” Ming said sadly, “look at the two of us, look around, and remember what that son of a dung dealer Ari said about where we are. There is no way to avoid what will happen. None. The only hope I have is that, somehow, I can either kill myself or at least take some of them with me before I disappear.”

It was impossible to tell the passage of time in the infirmary, with just the two of them there. They spoke almost nonstop, until it seemed to Angel that she’d told Ming everything about herself, and that Ming had told her much the same. The closeness they felt at the end of it belied their radically different backgrounds, traditions, and experiences; they felt a bond closer than sisters.

The medical cubes, or whatever they were, provided all they required; neither felt hungry, nor, after being awake for a while, was there any sense of thirst, let alone dehydration.

There were long gaps, though. When the medical computer wanted them to sleep, it simply injected something and they went to sleep, often in mid-sentence. Awakening later, there was clear evidence that work was being done on both of them, although it was difficult to tell what, save in the eyes. Ming’s vision was clearing, so that enhancement was no longer needed, but she found it impossible to focus. In fact, her vision was excellent, but she seemed locked in to a fixed focal length of infinity. Things far away to about two meters were fairly clear; closer was a blur.

Angel had a different treatment. Although damaged eyes could be replaced or regenerated easily, one of the things they took for granted, hers were replaced with artificial eyes that appeared normal, but retained the fish-eye vision and poor peripheral vision. She could focus, but it was like focusing a telephoto lens by willing it, rather than the natural sort of focus she’d had.

“They probably are cameras,” Ming guessed. “Transmitting type as well. Somebody will be able to see anything you do. They’re common in dangerous undercover work, but I don’t think that’s the purpose here. It shows he has different plans for you than for me, that’s for sure.”

Ari showed up now and again, but didn’t speak to them much and got out as quickly as possible. Ming’s bile was far too nasty to be taken for long, but Angel could see that his reaction did prove he was something of a wimp, as Ming had said. A Jules Wallinchky would have slapped the hell out of her for what she was saying, as she was held there helplessly.

Finally, the big man himself appeared. He’d trimmed his hair and beard and looked distinguished, even dapper, although, like most little men who’d risen higher than they dreamed, he was overfestooned with expensive rings and jewelry. He wore pure satin lounging pajamas, not the synthetic kind.

“So, my living statues, I am so pleased we’ve been able to get you back up to strength so quickly,” he greeted them, sounding like a genuine humanitarian.

“Yeah, we’re so pretty you should plate us and put us in your study,” Ming responded acidly.

He smiled. “You know, I know people who did things like that. Among the drug lords there’s almost a mania for it. They trim down and freeze up their enemies, captives they’ve gotten the best of, and sometimes people they hold for blackmail purposes, and they actually make living statuary out of them. The idea is mostly a reminder to would-be competitors and their own ambitious underlings, of course. I consider the practice rather tacky and low- class myself. If you need a lamp, buy a good one, I say.” He sighed. “Well, I heard you’re both well enough for us to get you out of there, and that the unfortunate eye damage is repaired. Putting you in regeneration tanks for long periods, while eventually the goal, would keep you out of circulation too long, and I have other business elsewhere. So, first we’ll rig you as temporaries, and then perhaps we’ll be able to give you some semblance of humanity again. It won’t take much practice, they tell me. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

And then he left, leaving Ming amazed at how little he’d lorded it over them.

“He almost sounded human,” Angel commented.

“Don’t worry. He won’t disappoint us. I know him too well,” Ming promised her.

What the “temporaries” were was revealed the next day, when both of them awoke for the first time not inside cubes but on real hospital beds.

Angel was astonished to wake up in a reclining position, and it was a few seconds before she realized that she had stretched her arms. Arms!

Well, not quite.

The blend was seamless; there was nothing of the bloody stump, only a blur where her flesh met a tough rubbery skin that extended down to an elbow, out to a wrist, then to hands. They weren’t her hands, nor models of them—the fingers were much longer, for one thing—but they were very human hands.

Except that the whole thing was semitransparent, as if the arm and hand had been made in some kind of machine from a mold and then attached to her nerve endings and nervous system somehow. It was odd to almost see through your arm and hand. It also didn’t feel like real flesh. Oh, it bent and manipulated quite naturally, but aside from a real concentration of feeling in the fingertips, it felt kind of dead. She drew a transparent nail across her right arm and could follow its progress, but did not have the sensitivity she expected.

Pulling off the covers, she saw that her legs and feet were the same, extending down from an area that covered the lower part of her buttocks. There was a nearly full-length mirror on a bulkhead near the bed, and she slowly rose, gingerly put her feet to the floor, then got up and stood for the first time in a long time. It took a little practice; she was unsteady, and used a table to remain standing, but it wasn’t all that hard to do. Then, again slowly, taking tiny steps, she managed to cross the two meters or so to the mirror.