'Meaning?'
'Toibin's gone. What he wanted or didn't want no longer matters. It's what I want that matters now. Get this system working. I want everything on this ship to be fully operational. Is that understood?'
'Sure, but the captain-'
'Gives the orders. I know. Do you want to make an issue of it?' Dumarest met the other's eyes, waited until they lowered. Quietly he said, 'Were you on Arpagus?'
'I was.'
'In charge of the armament?'
'That's right.' Badwasi straightened, his eyes wary. 'I aimed and fired the missiles – but I didn't call the shots.'
'Remember that,' said Dumarest. 'From now on no one calls the shots but me.'
'Understood, commander.' Badwasi turned to his panels as the lights flickered their warning. 'Good. At last we're on our way.'
In the caverns the temperature was constant and it was only imagination which caused Ryon to feel the semblance of a chill. Yet was it wholly imagination? He could feel the tension beneath the scarlet robe as his body adopted a protective stance against the loss of heat. An association, he decided, one born of the learning of failure and almost psychosomatic in its end result. One alien to all previous experience – never had he known fear. Yet now, scanning the report, he could sense what such an emotion could be.
But if fear was alien to his experience so was regret. The past was over and unchangeable. To blame the phenomenal luck which attended Dumarest was to follow an illogical path. A proof of inefficiency which he would never tolerate. The challenge remained and must be met. The means were to hand.
Machines had smoothed the floors so that the stone held a soft sheen over which he glided with an assured tread. An aide hovered discretely to one side. Another led the way through passages, rooms, compartments to an area in which the air pulsed with the murmur of assembled apparatus. Against a wall a screen showed a nacreous surface. Those present wore sterile white touched with the insignia of their crafts. Among them Ryon and his aides resembled living flames.
'Master.' Sing Candhar, seamed with years of study and service, bowed to the Cyber Prime. A gesture of respect for achievement and not an admission of servitude. 'The experiment is prepared and waiting.'
'Continue.'
The screen glowed to vibrant color. It showed a sterile chamber in which apparatus was assembled on a bench and, to one side, a construction of rods, cranks, and levers.
'A mechanical analogue of the human body,' explained Candhar. 'The major problem we have as yet encountered is the difficulty of the recorded mind-imprint to adjust itself to the unfamiliar host in which it finds itself. The brains have been divested of their bodies for many years and old habits have died or been forgotten. It is basically a matter of re-education.'
The next step to total domination. The recorded impression of a brain impressed on the sensitive metal node to be given life in a new form. The stumbling block had been unexpected but was totally understandable. If a brain, transplanted from one skull to another, hoped to control its new body, it had to establish synaptic links in order to unite mind and flesh. The expectation had been that such a union would be automatic. The facts were otherwise.
'Now,' said Candhar.
A lever jerked on the construction.
'The mind-imprint has been impressed on the analogue and is now learning what impulse results in what effect. The command is to lift and wave both arms.'
'Would moving one arm not be easier for it to master?'
'The arms, to be effective, must learn to work in unison. It is best to impress that from the outset.'
Again the analogue jerked in apparently random movements. A child, blind, deaf, without sensation, fumbling with gloved hands at buttons to find which did what, remembering the gained results, correlating them, uniting them with others to achieve control.
Learning to move, to crawl, to stand, to walk. To touch and see and discover the world around. A baby did it and so could a man.
'Are there signs of deterioration?'
'None as yet, master. There is some disorientation as we expected and, of necessity, a realignment of mental attitude. In effect we are witnessing a rebirth.'
A man wedding himself to metal. Ryon watched as the jerking movements of the analogue grew more frantic, rods shifting, clashing against levers, cranks jerking in a wild abandon. A metal spider threshing in an extreme of agony. A machine which had run berserk.
The threshing died as Candhar touched a control.
'What happened?'
'A failure, master.'
Another to add to the rest – this was not the first experiment. Another brain lost – the mind-imprint was not a copy but a transfer of the entire energy-pattern which made an individual. How must it have felt locked in an alien housing, afflicted by alien sensations?
An academic question, the intelligence had found refuge first in madness and then in the extinction attending the volatilization of the node.
Ryon said, 'Investigate the possibility that the analogue was too alien for the intelligence to accept. A more familiar host must be found. One with which the imprint can sense an affinity.'
'A clone?'
'Perhaps. One from the actual brain tissue itself would have the highest chance of success.'
'Marie, the late Cyber Prime, instigated an experiment which could be of value,' suggested Candhar. 'It was placed in abeyance when circumstances dictated a change of effort. It might be possible to utilize the progress which had been made.'
'That decision has already been taken. Proceed as instructed.'
Ryon swept from the room attended by his silent aides. Down more passages, into other rooms, ending in one which held medical scents and a real, not imagined chill. Like Candhar the medical technician was no longer young. His bow was as perfunctorily.
'Master. I have done as you asked.'
'The situation?'
'The experiment can be completed without too much expenditure of effort or loss of time.'
The required answer. Ryon stepped to a transparent wall and studied what lay beyond. Marie had planned well and the logic of the Cyclan had done the rest. While to maintain a lapsed experiment was wasteful yet to discard accomplished achievement was inefficient. The change of effort Candhar had mentioned, induced when Marie had demonstrated his inefficiency and had paid the price of failure, had given him the key to ultimate success.
The dream had died, killed by endless days, vanishing to trail behind her like torn and dusty cobwebs mocking in their memories of what might have happened. She'd hoped for so much. To be free, unrestrained, untrammeled, yet all she had accomplished was to have moved from one prison to another and that of the ship was more confining than she had thought possible. A closed world in which she felt she was being moulded into a figure of madness.
'Nadine, here are the figures for the lower decks.' Nigel Myer handed her a slip of paper, not meeting her eyes, too eager to rejoin his comrades to be more than barely polite. 'Is there anything else?'
He moved away as she shook her head, released from duties invented to make him feel important and give him a sense of purpose. She knew too well the compliment of the ship. Knew the cliques and cabals which were building and changing, the associations and groups. But, while the compliment found pleasure in the company of others and could talk and make plans she could only walk from one compartment to another, to the salon, the hold, her cabin where, thank God, she could be alone.
'Just a minute!' A woman came towards her, bright touches of paint accentuating her lips and eyes, the bones of her face. Tazima Osborn, arrogant, fuming with anger. 'I'm changing one of my cabin-partners. Ellen Beram. I can't stand the bitch. Lisa is willing to take her place. See to it.'
