Charon (5 page)

 
But nowhere was there any sign of anything else like the Warden organism. It didn't belong there, not on those worlds. It had no dear ancestors, no relatives,
no
dead ends. In fact, it had no place or reason to evolve down there.

 
"The remote probes—the ones that preceded the initial landings on all four worlds. Why didn't those core samples show the Warden?"

 
"The instruments were not really designed to look for something like it," the computer replied. "Only after they knew something was there could they find it.

 
"Mighty poor procedures," he noted. "The whole idea of an exploration is to find just such new threats as this."

 
"If a question has not been asked it will rarely be answered," the computer responded philosophically. "In other words, nobody can think of everything. Still, why the interest in the old samples? Surely you don't think the Warden organism itself can be the aliens?"

 
"No, of course not.
It's an incredibly odd and alien thing, but even in its collective mode it's hardly capable of a consciousness. You know, there are worlds in our catalogue where this thing wouldn't really shock me or any of the scientists one bit—but not here. The thing doesn't fit here. It's as if
an iceberg were
suddenly found on a tropical world—it just doesn't logically belong there."

 
"A number of researchers and theorists have noted as much. Some have even theorized an interstellar origin—it arrived, perhaps in a meteorite, and set up housekeeping. That is the prevailing theory."

 
He nodded. "But why just on Lilith? Or was it just on Lilith? How do we
know
we were the carriers to the other three worlds? Perhaps by the time we found the thing all four had already
been
contaminated, if they were."

 
"It has been postulated that the Wardens existed on all four worlds, too," the computer told him. "Sampling work was taken from a base ship that was actually beyond the life range of the Warden organism. However, since plant life did not disintegrate in the Warden manner it was simply assumed that the Wardens were not yet there."

 
"Assumed ... I wonder.
What about the plant samples from Lilith, then?"

 
"I just checked on that. The fact is,
all
vegetation died in the samples from Lilith, but there were a thousand natural explanations and it was not taken as a terrible sign. It wasn't unusual enough in general surveys of alien worlds, really. Many alien plants are interdependent on organisms and conditions requiring exacting biospheres to survive—a minuscule change in pressure or temperature, for example. Although Lilith's samples died first, all of the samples died within a period of a day or two at most. This is normal and expected. You
cant
possibly hope to duplicate every exact condition for totally alien forms of life. Still, your proposition is now beyond proof. All four worlds have the Warden organism."

 
"Still, it is an interesting speculation."

 
"Why? If the alien-spore theory is correct, and it seems most logical, it might easily hit all four as one. That proves nothing."

 
"Maybe not," he murmured to himself. "Maybe . . ." He got up and walked forward to the control area. "Who's in?"

 
"Charon."

 
"Too bad.
Most of all I want Medusa now, I think. I'm beginning to think the confirmation of my theories must lie there—and perhaps beyond. I suspect that Charon's not going to add any new pieces."

 
"You're sure you just aren't trying to avoid the experience?"

 
He stopped and looked around quizzically. Was he? He
did
dread this new experience, it was true, but was he kidding himself, or the computer?

 
He sat down in the master command chair and adjusted it for maximum comfort. The computer lowered the small probes, which he carefully placed on his head; then the thinking machine that was part of the module itself administered the measured injections and began the master readout

 
For a while he floated in a semihypnotic fog, but slowly
the unages
started forming in his brain as they had before. Only now they seemed more definite, clearer, more like
his own
thoughts.

 
The drugs and small neural probes did their job.
His own
mind and personality receded, replaced by a similar, yet oddly different pattern.

 
"The agent is commanded to report," the computer ordered, sending the command deep into his own mind, a mind no longer quite his own.

 
Recorders clicked on.

 
Slowly the man in the chair cleared his throat. He mumbled, groaned, and made odd, disjointed words and sounds as his mind received the data and coded, classified, adjusted, and sorted it all out.

 
Finally the man began to speak.

CHAPTER ONE -
Rebirth

After Krega's talk and a little preparation to put my own affairs in order—this would be a long one—I checked into the Confederacy Security Clinic. I'd been here many times before, of course, but not knowingly for this purpose. Mostly, this was where they programmed you with whatever information you'd need for a mission and where, too, you were "reintegrated." Naturally, the kind of work I did was often extralegal—a term I prefer to "illegal," which implies criminal intent—and much of it was simply too hot ever to be known. To avoid such risks, all agents had their own experience of a mission wiped from their minds whenever it involved sensitive matters.

 
It may seem like a strange life, going about not knowing where you have been or what you've done, but it has its compensations. Because any potential enemy, military or political, knows youVe been wiped, you can live a fairly normal, relaxed life outside of a mission structure. There's no purpose to coming after you—you have no knowledge of what you've done or why or for whom. In exchange for these blanks, an agent of the Confederacy lives a life of luxury and ease, with an almost unlimited supply of money' and with all the comforts supplied. I bummed around, swam, gambled, ate in the best restaurants, played a little semipro ball or cube—I'm pretty good, and it keeps me in shape. I enjoyed every minute of it, and except for my regular requalification training sessions, four-to-six-week stints that resemble military basic training only nastier and more sadistic, I felt no guilt at my playboy life. The training sessions are to make sure that your body and mind don't stagnate from all that good living. They have sensors in you that they constantly monitor to determine when you need a good refresher.

 
I often wondered just how sophisticated these sensors were.
The notion that a whole security staff could see all my debauchery and indiscretions used to worry me, but after a while you learn to ignore it.

 
The life offered in trade is just too nice. Besides, what could I do about it, anyway? People on most of the civilized worlds these days had such sensors, although hardly to the degree and sophistication of mine. How else could a population so vast and so spread out possibly be kept orderly, progressive, and peaceful?

 
But when a mission came up it wasn't practical to forgo all that past experience. A wipe without storage simply wouldn't have
been
a good idea, since a good agent gets better by not repeating his mistakes. So in the Security Clinic they had everything you ever experienced on file, and the first thing you did was get the rest of you put back so you would be whole for whatever mission they'd dreamed up this time. I was always amazed when I rose from that chair with my past fully restored. Just the clear memories of the things I'd done always surprised me—that /, of all people, had done this or that.

 
The only difference this time, I knew, was that the process would be taken one step further. Not only would the complete me get up from that table, but the same memory pattern would be impressed on other minds, other bodies— as many as needed until a take was achieved.

 
I wondered what the others would be like, those four versions of
myself
. Physically different, probably—the offenders they got here didn't normally come from the civilized worlds, where people had basically been standardized in the name of equality. No, these people would be from the frontier, from the traders and miners and freebooters that always existed at the edge of expansion. They were certainly necessary in an expanding culture, since a high degree of individuality, self-reliance, originality, and creativity was required in the dangerous situations in which they lived. A stupid government would have eliminated all such, but a stupid government quickly degenerates and loses its vitality and growth potential by standardization. Utopia was for the masses, of course, but not for everyone—or it wouldn't
be
Utopia very long.

 
That was the original reason for the Warden Diamond Reserve in the first place. Some of these hard frontier people are so individualistic that they become a threat to the stability of the civilized worlds. The trouble is, anybody able to crack the fabric that holds our society together is most likely the smartest, nastiest, meanest, cleverest, most original sort of person humanity can produce—and therefore not somebody whose mind should idly be wiped clean. The Diamond, it was felt, would effectively trap people like that forever, yet allow them continued creative opportunities, which when properly monitored might still produce, something of value for the Confederacy.

 
Of course the felons down there were anxious to please as well, since the alternative was death. Eventually such creative minds made
themselves
indispensable to the Confederacy and ensured their continued survival. That possibility had been foreseen, but it wasn't altogether unwelcome. Like all criminal organizations in the past, they provided services that people were convinced should be illegal or were unmoral or some such, but
that masses
of people wanted anyway.

 
The damned probe hurt like hell. Usually there was just some tingling
,
then a sensation much like sleep, and you woke up a few minutes later in the chair yourself once again. This time the tingling became a painful physical force that seemed to enter my skull, bounce around,
then
seize control of my head. It was as if a giant fist had grabbed my brain and squeezed, then released, then squeezed again. Instead of drifting off to sleep, I passed out

 
I woke up and groaned slightly. The throbbing was gone, but the memory was still all too current and all too real. It was several minutes, I think, before I found enough strength to sit up.

 
The old memories flooded back, and again I amazed
myself,
by recalling many of my past exploits. I wondered if my surrogate selves would get similar treatment, considering that they couldn't be wiped after this mission as I could. That caused me to make a mental note that those surrogates would almost certainly have to be killed if they did have my entire memory pattern. Otherwise a lot of secrets would be loose in the Warden Diamond, many in the hands of people who'd know just what sort of use to make of them.

 
No sooner had I had that thought than I had an odd feeling that something was very wrong. I looked around the small room in which I'd awakened and realized immediately the source of that feeling.

 
This wasn't the Security Clinic, wasn't anyplace I'd ever seen before.
A tiny cubicle, about twelve cubic meters total, including the slightly higher than normal ceiling.
In it was a small cot on which I'd awakened, a small basin and next to it a standard food port, and in the wall, a pulldown toilet. That was it
Nothing
else—or was there?

 
I looked around and spotted the most obvious easily. Yes, I couldn't make a move without being visually and probably aurally monitored. The door was almost invisible and there was certainly no way to open it from inside. I knew immediately where I was.

 
It was a prison cell.

 
Far worse, I could feel a faint vibration that had no single source. It wasn't irritating; in fact, it was so dun as to be hardly noticeable, but I knew what it was. I was aboard a ship, moving somewhere through space.

 
I stood up, reeling a little bit from a slight bout of dizziness that soon passed, and looked down at my body. It was small and lithe, almost wiry, but there was muscle there and no fat at all. I had a few rough-looking scars, but aside from the evident fact that they had been more crudely treated than by a meditech they didn't look all that unusual. The skin was naturally dark, with an almost olive complexion that was unusual but apparently quite natural.
A natural-born body, then, and not one that had been genetically engineered.
It would be psychologically difficult to adjust to being not merely short but small. I could only stand there, stunned, for I don't know how long.