Charon (32 page)

 
Darva, I heard with excitement, managed it also, although the sound was more like a deep belching sound than -anything else. We were stopped there and given a chance to practice. We managed in an amazingly short time to form crude words and sentences. It was a breakthrough, and one that said we were on the way. But how long would the rest take?

 
I discovered in talking that Darva had had a much rougher fight with her animal self than I, and was still having trouble. Dr. Yissim now knew this too, and in a separate session one day told me, "If we are to bring her all the way back, we may have to do another radical procedure."

 
"Of what sort?"
I rasped, my new voice sounding odd— and yet appropriate to a bunhar, if bunhars could talk— even to me.

 
"You are now far enough down the line to control a great deal of your body. The
wa
is powerful and controlled in you. But if we were to remove you from lab conditions, both of you would quickly revert, simply because you are so far along. She would change much before you. You might even fight it off, but I doubt if she could. You need reinforcement and the only reinforcement around comes from each other. It's called a
wa
connection, and it may be her only hope—but only you can decide on it." "There is danger then."

 
She nodded. "You know bow the
wa
is really one, how it is in total communication with all other
wa"
"Yes."

 
"But your consciousness contains the
wa
and directs it, and this is a method by which the
wa
of one consciousness is transmitted to the other and then stabilized. A permanent link is established."

 
"You mean our minds would
merge?"
"No. The
wa
is directed by thought; it is not thought itself. No, your
bodies
would merge, on the
wa
,
or metaphysical, level. Anything done to one, with the aid of the other, could be easily duplicated in the other body. Her mind would give you the little extra push you would need not merely to control, but to
direct
the
wa
in your body. And conversely, your having achieved this, the process could be easily reversed. However, such a toted link, similar to casting a changeling spell but far more elaborate, has a drawback. If forged effectively enough to work on this level, it cannot be broken. The
wa
of one would be the
wa
of both. If you progress to the next stage of
wa
training, it could give you enormous power.
Enormous.
But you would be absolutely identical. Even an injury to one would be felt by the other."

 
"And the danger?"

 
"If her
wa
instincts overwhelm you, she could drag you down with her."

 
"And if this is not done?"

 
"Then we might well, over a long period, bring you back—but she would be lost. She simply doesn't have the mental training you seem to have." "Then let's do it," I told her.

CHAPTER TWELVE - "The Wa Considers You One"

I had seen very little of Koril's redoubt since our arrival, for obvious reasons, but clearly several things were going on here that I would never have anticipated or even believed from my previous experience on Charon. Gone was the mumbo-jumbo, except for some general references to spells that seemed to be here more words of convenience than words implying some
mystique.
Down here was a thoroughly professional and scientific base where crisp, well-trained professionals examined and stretched their knowledge of the Warden organisms' powers and peculiarities almost to the limit. The technology, though, that supported it was basically from Cerberus, the only one of the four Warden worlds where efficient and modern industrial production was possible. This place remained in operation because of its unique below-ground desert location. Koril had surveyed and picked the one point on Charon that would allow such material and facilities to work and duplicated the precise conditions here.

 
Obviously the place hadn't just been thrown together in the last five years since he had been deposed. This was a far longer and more ambitious project than could have been assembled by some rebel, no matter how powerful he was, and it had to be sustained by clandestine traffic even between the Warden worlds. This refuge had been set up and outfitted in the years Koril was Lord of the Diamond, and
somebody—
certainly not the Four Lords—continued to supply it with spare parts.

 
The computers used here were hardly the equal of anything in the Confederacy—they were, in fact, incredibly primitive—but they were certainly better than the calculators and abacuses that I had used as Town Accountant

 
The level of instruction we were given indicated an enormous amount of progress on understanding the Warden organism's mechanisms, even if the bottom line of knowing where their power and information came from remained a mystery. It was like gravity—centuries after gravity was first truly identified and quantified it was still not at all understood. Those who didn't understand
what
it was had discovered every effect and use of gravity despite their basic ignorance of just what really caused it.

 
The exercises were serious, complex and required an enormous amount of knowledge of a large number of disciplines
in
order to use them effectively. That, in fact, was why the most poweful users were either former prisoners from the Confederacy or natives trained as apts when they were very, very young. In my business, it was absolutely vital to know as much as possible—and at least a little about everything—and this gave me an enormous advantage in the training. Darva, on the other hand, had virtually no education and only limited experience with human behavior outside her own local group; that was the hang-up. My own mind control techniques and self-hypnotic abilities were crucial to the process, and my understanding of basic human behavior, particularly my own, gave me the advantage. But the spell that had made me a changeling was an imitative spell. I was locked into the spell originally used on Darva, and so the weaknesses in it, her weaknesses, were repeated in me. She could not control her
wa
,
and so her
wa
was hell-bent on taking the path of least resistance. And what her
vca
did, mine duplicated, since her half-trained great grandmother had taken the short cut of linking my spell to hers. This was no matter of waving your hands and making chairs appear or disappear; I was dealing with a complex psychological and biological science involving the spin-off effects of a tiny organism that had no counterpart in human experience beyond the Warden Diamond.

 
Darva and I were led through as much basic training and instruction as we could take.
She
had to be "cured" before I could be, but I was the only one that could master the stuff well enough to do the job-—and it was a job you really had to do for yourself. It was not simply a matter of removing the original spell either. That might have worked in the early stages, but things had gone too far. The Wardens themselves, freed from any spell, would just hurl us back into the animal world without restraint, dragging me with her.

 
I was certainly well enough advanced after two months to do the job, although I was also aware that mastering principles and exploring the potential to the utmost were two very different things. I could cast a spell, even produce a changeling—do just about everything Korman and his apts had demonstrated plus a lot more—but it might be years of experimentation and practice before I had it all mastered. I could read Isil's spell very easily—and the copy in myself—and even see where and how it was unraveling in the wrong direction. I even thought it was possible for me to break free myself, to sever my connection to Darva—but that would mean abandoning her. How funny! My old self wouldn't have hesitated a moment—she had been useful and good company, but she was no longer necessary to me. The old me would have discarded her at this point and concentrated on total mastery of the
wa
and the fabrication of a new, fine body. Logically that was the only course that made any sense.

 
And yet, I couldn't abandon her. I simply could not do it. I admit I agonized over the decision, but not because it was a hard one to make. What it would mean, though, was that I would be compromising my own mission—if, in fact, I still wanted to have one. It seemed equally logical that my best interests lay in the future course of Charon, not in the direction of the Confederacy—although, here, the two might be close. Aeolia Matuze must go, of course, and if Morah represented the aliens then he too must go. But did it have to be
me
who did it? From the looks of the place, Koril was more formidable than I could ever be.

 
That, of course, was the ultimate reason for my decision. My first loyalty was to myself, and I wanted Darva saved. If that somewhat compromised the rest—well, so be it I was only part of a team here, and I had to wonder why the
Confederacy ,even
bothered to send me to a place like Charon, with so well-prepared and equipped a rebel organization. Unless Koril too was not exactly what he seemed?

 
I bad carried out the procedures so often in practice that when we came down to the real thing there seemed nothing to it. The staff, Yissim and the others, seemed amazed at my rapid progress. I discovered that there was a relative rating system for sores, I being the strongest they had seen (such as Koril and Month), to V. Lower ratings were apts—VI to X. Tully Kokul, whom I hadn't seen nor heard from since that time on the beach, was a IV or V; Korman was a II. Normally, anyone could become a X with nominal training; apt VI was generally assumed to take one to two years for someone from Outside, like me, who had the necessary mental control, and perhaps ten years for a native raised as an apt from childhood. After VI it wasn't a matter of learning the procedure, but learning how to understand and use it, developing mental control, confidence, and accumulating knowledge to expand your range of influences. It had been barely three months since I'd begun training in Kokul's tent, and the staff easily rated me a V. Of course, the fact that I had nothing else to do, no distractions, the top instructors, and that mastering it was a matter of life or death—literally—for both Darva and myself had a lot to do with the speed, as did my own breeding, experience, and practice as an agent

 
What I was going to do was, from my point of view, absurdly simple. I mentioned that the Warden sense was like open lines of energy, a communications net of infinite complexity, from me to everything around me. I was going to send complex prearranged messages—commands—to Darva's mind, to her controlling Wardens who were at the heart of our predicament I was then going to direct her self-repair, point by point and area by area. In this I was aided by the redoubt's computer visualizations, which did a lot of the difficult preparatory work for me. It was a measure of the difference between, say, Morah and myself, that I couldn't have gone this far without the computer aids—everyone felt sure that
he
could.

 
I had taught Darva basic hypnotic techniques and now used them both on her and on myself. I was conscious of an audience for all this, but I couldrft see anyone. The experts would be there if needed, but otherwise would remain completely out of sight, and mind. I knew, though, that a lot of big shots were watching. Yissim had said they had learned an enormous amount of new material through our case—which, in the end, was the only reason all this was going on anyway.

 
The big problem had always been what to do with the extra mass. It could be reduced very slowly, over a period of perhaps years, but we hardly wanted mat. I had almost 220 kilos to deal with—not an easy task. More importantly I wanted no trace of the old spell; I wanted no way that the Wardens could someday run wild again and reduce us to animals. So we had to become something with no equivalent outside my own mind.

 
Alone, in that how very familiar white room, I began. Hypnotized, Darva was far easier to take control of—but to be able to impose my spells so dominantly over the old that I could then wipe the old clean required tremendous concentration and mental effort. So much, in fact, that the experts believed it would be impossible ever to close those lines of communications from me to her and back again.

 
I cast the spell, using all the force at my command. The resistance was extremely hard and somewhat surprising. I saw immediately what the original sores had run into the first time they tried, and it was tremendous. But they hadn't been prepared for it, nor had they used this kind of force of wUl, backed by my total commitment to breaking it at all cost. What we were dealing with was, of course, at heart a psych problem—her romanticizing about the two of us in the wild—that any good psych could cure back in the civilized worlds. Here it simply had to be beaten back. I had to decouple and push back her subconscious control over her body's
wa
by making her consciously override it, -then guide that force of will to my own. She was rated an apt 7, but she lacked the total commitment to break the pattern. I was supplying that.