Only Human (30 page)

Baroch untangled his long braid from the
helmet visor. "At ease, Carras. And yes, I do feel exalted whenever I have
the privilege of flying a fine ship such as the kite."

Carras did not relax his formal stance. To
do so would have been a slight to Baroch's rank. "Forgive me, sire, I had
expected to meet with you aboard the
Erato
."

The Delphian smiled. "Ah, never
assume, never expect. Had you known me, you would have expected me to enjoy the
kite. Had you expected me, you would have insisted on boarding
Erato
. Am
I assuming too much?"

"No, sir, your safety on Targon is questionable.
Aboard the
Erato
–"

"Aboard the
Erato
I would not
have had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the kite. Allow me my
pleasures, these days they are few."

Baroch loosened his uniform to let his
braid slip beneath his suit. Then he unfolded a hood from his rolled collar and
draped it over his head. "To a safe room, then, so that we may talk."

The other pilot stepped close to his side,
now carrying Baroch's helmet. Carras realized that he had seen him before. Not
just a bodyguard, this man was a Prime Staff agent, one the Ten's separate
security force that answered to no one else. When Soto rejoined him, Carras
motioned to him with a private signal. Soto fell into step with them, his hand
near his pistol, his eyes alert to danger.

The four men walked only a few steps and
ascended a staircase that led to a long, narrow room overlooking the landing
area. It was empty at this time of day. No visitors had toured here to observe
the activities below, no tired pilots rested here between shifts. Carras knew
this to be so. Long ago, he had begun to discourage the use of this room. It
was a convenient place to detain suspect visitors for questioning before they saw
more of the base than the bays. A small, steadily glowing indicator by the food
service area assured that the room was free of listening devices.

Baroch looked about and nodded, satisfied.
"You may leave us," he said to both Soto and his own guard.

When they were alone, he turned to Carras.
"I assume," he smiled, "that you would appreciate an explanation."

Carras nodded. "It is not often that
one of the Elected Ten Factors will commandeer one of our battleships for a
personal conveyance. Especially not the
Erato
."

Baroch stood by the one-way glass wall,
unseen by those below. "This is a military matter, I assure you. Let us
not waste time. Not only did I summon
Erato
, but battleship
Teti
will also arrive within a few hours."

"
Teti
!"

"Your old command, correct? Well, you
will once again take her, if only for a few days." The Delphian turned to
Carras, his expression grave. "We will take them both to Shaddallam."

"Sire," Carras objected. "I
believe we have that situation under control. V7 and One are on the ground and
actively engaged in the investigation. Three and Nine are in the sector. All
outgoing traffic from any part of Shaddallam is monitored. It may take a while
before our agents can locate the boy's exact position. Shaddallam is a large
planet and we can't alert the rebel to our presence. I have not had any
indication that further support is required. Surely the mobilization of two
battleships is a provocation we don't need at this point."

"A delegation from Delphi met with me
on Feyd," Baroch said as if he had heard none of Carras' assurances.
"Shantirs."

"Oh?"

Baroch held his gaze.

"How bad is it?" Carras said
finally, his voice hoarse.

"Bad," Baroch said. "Worse!
I have some files with me that indicate what Delphi hoped to gain from this
creature Tughan Wai. It is beyond what we imagined."

"I can imagine a few things."

"If you could you would not be sitting
complacently in your offices, holding audiences with salespeople!" Baroch
snapped. "I am sure that you have studied those grand, overblown legends
surrounding the Tughan Wai. Heroic stories of a superbeing that will protect
the people of Delphi. They tell of some savior figure that will blow up
battleships and collapse jumpsites. The truth is much simpler, Carras. The Tughan
kills. It wants to kill. Once released, it cannot be stopped. Mentally, it
feeds on what it kills and grows to include what it has killed. Kill a thousand
men and it becomes those thousand men, weak or strong, within one body. The Tughan
will gain complete understanding of all of them. And what will he do with this
knowledge? He sure as you're sitting there will not be blowing up enemy ships
for Delphi or anyone else for that matter!"

Baroch closed his eyes to allow himself a
moment of reflection. Calmer, he went on to explain. "The concept for the Tughan
Wai is based on the khamal, which is initiated by touch. Except that this
creature does not just share its partner's thought and mind, it absorbs it
entirely. It copies and understands every connection and every synapse ever
made by that mind. Unfortunately, the victim's brain is destroyed by this. That
is the design flaw that the Shantirs fear. And none of them know just how much
touch is required to do this. Perhaps none at all. Perhaps it can simply
think
itself into a khamal with any one of us. With any thousand of us. Who knows?
Perhaps tens of thousands."

Carras swallowed hard, understanding.
"Unless..."

"Unless the body now occupied by the Tughan
Wai dies. He is as mortal as you and I. For now. But who can really know what
he will become?"

"My agents have orders to return the
child to Delphi at once. We all understand the research opportunities."

"Can you not understand the threat of
this thing? It can never be contained. Delphi does not want him. Their studies
over the past few years resulted in some interesting conclusions. The boy was
already earmarked for termination. Had Tharron not taken him, he would have
been destroyed by the Shantirate before the Tughan emerges on its own at the
end of his puberty, around the age of twenty-five."

"I have confidence in my people. They
will be able to retrieve the boy."

"Carras," Baroch said
impatiently. "Suppose that he does not wish to be retrieved."

 Carras paled.

Baroch folded his arms and leaned against
the window, his eyes on the shift change below. Patrol planes landed, their
crews deplaned, waving tiredly to their replacements before heading toward the
dressing rooms and on to fourteen hours of downtime before their next shift.
"You are concerned about a living, walking bomb. You think Tharron has a
gun bigger than ours. So it may be. And so what? Time will pass. People live,
they die, whether led by us or by him. It does not matter." Baroch turned
back to face him. "Our worry has gone beyond this. This living, walking
bomb has a living, working mind. Probably the finest mind ever conceived, once
the creation is complete. Once the Tughan awakes, he will understand Tharron.
He will touch Tharron and he will know more about Tharron than Tharron
does."

"He will not remain as a tool in rebel
hands."

"Nor ours. He is a greater force than Tharron's
rebels and the Union Commonwealth combined. He will be beyond anything we can
ever hope to understand." Baroch leaned closer to Carras. "He will
hate us for what we have done to him. He may destroy all of us in the rage he
will feel over his creation. And he won’t stop then because he needs to kill in
order to grow. And he will live to god-like proportions!"

"But he is Delphian! By birth! His
nature–"

"His nature will change with every
single thing he touches. There is no such thing as a benevolent god! We have
made it so with every religion we invented."

Carras' mind was churning madly, groping
for reason among the dreadful visions his brain even now tried to digest.
Incredibly, he found himself wishing he were still engaged with that pest of a
slave trader in his office.

 "We were beyond lucky to have found
them on Shaddallam as quickly as we did. Our luck won't hold forever. You and I
both know that the odds are great that Tharron himself is also on Shaddallam. We
cannot take the chance that he will hide the boy elsewhere if he is unable to
use him now. We have intercepted a message that one of Tharron's carriers has
left for Shaddallam. What can your agents there possibly accomplish against a
battleship? We will go to Shaddallam as soon as the
Teti
arrives. He
will not get away! No one must leave that planet until the Tughan is eliminated."

* * *

Nova wasted no time in assessing her
situation. She launched herself forward to use her momentum and this instance
of surprise to ram her shoulder into Tychon's midriff, throwing both of them
over the cot and onto the floor. His gun spun into the shadows.

He pushed her away and struggled to his
feet. His knees buckled drunkenly and he swayed as though it was an effort to
keep his balance. But he circled her, ready to pounce.

"Ty, it's me! Don't you recognize
me?"

"You're one of them. Don't come any
closer."

Desperately, Nova tried to remember what
she had learned of the mind altering methods used by their enemies. She groped
for long-forgotten classroom sessions dealing with Tharron's ways and searched
her mind for the few instances that she had come across mental domination. If
Tychon had fallen victim to Tharron's drugs they would surely have been
administered in a quantity to kill him eventually.

She moved toward him, sure that he was
about to collapse. But he surprised her. When she reached for him he lunged and
his fist caught her shoulder, throwing her back to collide with the wall behind
her. Something was lending him strength, perhaps pumping adrenalin where
nothing else was keeping him upright.

She whipped around him, measuring how fast
he followed, and moved toward the door. "Ty, come on. It's me, Nova. Look
at me!"

"Nova is dead. Your people killed
her!"

"No, please listen. Hear my voice. I'm
right here."

He shook his head, seeing nothing before
him but an enemy. "You took her," he said, his face a mask of anguish.
"You took my wife. Then you took my son. And now you took her, too. Why
did you not also take my life!"

Nova's tears doubled and trebled his image
before her. Her tears were for the bruises on his body and the blood that
smeared his skin and clothes. He trembled from head to foot as he fought to
remain standing. Tharron's torturers had managed to extinguish the warm glow of
his eyes and left him blank, a mere shell in which to place their murderous
assignment. She felt her body and soul cry out to him, aching to hold him, heal
him.

"Please wake up!" she pleaded.

He lurched toward her as if massive weights
were tied to his feet.

"Think, you stupid greenie," Nova
berated herself, fighting her emotions. "Think like a Delphian." She
backed away from Tychon, moving slowly. His voice sounded hollow and coarse,
she suspected that he was dehydrated. But his words were not slurred by drugs
and his pale eyes were focused. She dared to hope that drugs had not been the
cause of this profound change in him. What else would work quickly enough to
make him susceptible to their tampering? It had to be something mechanical,
something that could be turned off.

Then it came to her. Somewhere on his back
would be a small metal plug. A crude device that was one of Tharron's
favorites. Once embedded in the skin, it would send disturbing messages to its
carrier's brain along the nerves in the spine. It would then only take a few
hours of constantly repeated suggestions to plant a thought, an emotion or an
attitude into the subject's mind. And Tychon's mind was already taxed to
exhaustion by their khamal.

The khamal! Nova focused on their mental
link and screamed her fear into his wide open mind.

He lurched away from her, clutching his
head. His legs gave out and he crashed to the floor.

She scrambled to where he had fallen,
distraught by the pain she had caused him. "Ty? Ty, talk to me!" She shook
his shoulder. "Please, Ty!"

He lowered his arms from his head,
breathing heavily.

"You okay? I'm sorry." She helped
him to sit up.

Nova did not struggle when his long fingers
closed around her neck. She conserved her air, beating down the waves of panic,
knowing that if she gave in to her fear now, she would be dead. Her hand
reached around his back and slipped under his hair. She touched a hard,
metallic protrusion close to his spine. The flesh around it was hot and
swollen. Perhaps it would still be safe to remove it. She felt herself
weakening, sure that her head was about to explode, followed closely by her
lungs. Her nails dug into his skin, tearing at the hard edges of the control
unit. It wrenched from his back with a small, insignificant sound that she
would never forget.

She stifled his roar of pain with her
bloodied hand and held him down with her body while she coughed, gasping for
air. He was writhing. Beads of sweat appeared on his face as he fought the agony
she had inflicted, his eyes bulging, not leaving hers until he was able to
breathe again.