Charon: A Dragon at the Gate Read online

  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 couldn’t 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 sorcs 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 wa, 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.

  It turned into an odd mental battle, almost a cross between a stubborn argument and rerouting points on a circuit diagram. At one and the same time I was constantly identifying and beating back her own subconsciously directed wa while, with her, I was trying to find any and all routes of wa communication between conscious mind and body and then tie them up, even dominate them, while isolating this strong, primitive influence, isolating it, and beating it back into submission. None of this had any effect on her mind or thought processes, of course; we were attacking only the wa, the Warden organisms giving out the wrong signal.

  As the impasse became more obvious, I began talking to her, soothing her, trying to direct her, to convince her that she must not give in to this primitive, animal will. “Darva—if you have any regard, any feeling for me, you must help me! You must beat it back!”

  “I do. You know I do,” she responded.

  “Darva—if you—love—me, let it go! You must!” The use of that word sounded odd to me, yet now I almost understood it. At least, I thought, I could use it. “Darva—I do this because I love you. If you know that and love me too, release! Let it go!” It was odd, what I had said for clinical purposes. Did I, in fact, love her? Was that why I was doing this?

  Abruptly, the resistance broke—gave up, receded into the depths of her mind. It was so sudden and so unexpected that I wasn’t prepared, and the whole force of my will flooded into her, so strong it almost knocked her out. I recovered as quickly as possible, retracing the pathways, seeing how the spell had been so neatly tied and then re-tied.

  The rest was absurdly simple after that, I just followed the computer models I had memorized and practiced again and again. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, at best, although later I was told it was more than seven hours, we were done.

  I pushed out the waste and fatty accumulations unnecessary for life rather easily, and did some internal rearranging to expel as much water and excess tissue as possible, getting the wa to treat it like common waste and thus assist its expulsion. The shift amounted to more than 30 kilos and looked and smelled horrible, but I was in no state at that point to appreciate it. 190 kilos were still a hell of a lot, but every bit lost made the job easier.

  Diagrams, pictograms, three-dimensional views and designs both internal and external flashed through my mind from training and into hers and thus to the wa itself. And she was changing, flowing, redirecting to my commands. I could literally feel it, sense it, as if it were happening inside my own body.

  When the job was finished I still couldn’t relax because, thanks to the linkage, my body was in fact a mirror image of hers in every single respect, and that wasn’t my intent In fact, what took so very long was the attempt to differentiate my body from hers. There were a large number of false starts, as everything I tried to do to myself I found duplicating in her. We knew it might happen, and I hoped now she was up to the task. I could visualize only her, therefore, she must direct my own reconstitution while I concentrated on keeping her stable as she was. Doing so was difficult, because I was the stronger, but we finally worked out a system that would flow information both ways, an eerie sensation like trying to do three things at once, but one we finally mastered.

  And when it was finally over, we both passed out for more than ten hours.

  We both awoke, stirred, and opened our eyes. Somewhere an alarm buzzer sounded, probably to summon somebody when we awoke, I thought. Visions of computer diagrams and electrical signals pulsed in my brain, and I knew I was going to have a hell of a time getting rid of them.

  “Oh, my god! It really did work!” Darva said, amazed. “Look at you!”

  “Look at you,” I responded. “I’m proud of you.”

  “We need mirrors,” she decided. “Say—can you sense the wa between us?”

  I hadn’t really paid much attention, but now that she pointed it out I sensed what she meant The links were still there, the lines of communication from nervous system to nervous system were intact.

  A door opened, and Dr. Yissim and two others entered. One was a large, burly-looking man with rugged complexion and snow-white hair and moustache. I knew at a glance that he had at one time been part of the civilized worlds. He was dressed entirely in white, but not the medical whites of Yissim. His clothing was fine, tailor-fitted and almost a uniform. The other man was in every way weird.

  He was small, had a goatee, wore horn-rimmed glasses—a real anomaly here, the Wardens made certain of your eyesight and everything else—and he was dressed in a casual tweed jacket and dark blue slacks. That alone would have been enough to cause a stare, but there was something more dramatically wrong with him.

  I suddenly knew how an animal that trusted its sense of smell above all else felt when confronted with its reflection in a mirror.

  The man was patently-there—I could see him, touch him, everything. But he had no wa, no Warden sense at all. On the level I had been learning to trust above all else, the Warden organism level, he simply did not exist.

  “How are you feeling?” Yissim asked me.

  “A little weak, otherwise fine,” I told her. “We both would love a mirror, though.”

  “We expected that,” she responded with a slight smile, then nodded to the far wall, the one that held the technician’s booth. Instead of becoming clear, an indirect light made the surface a good reflector, with only a slight hint of the consoles in back. We both turned and looked at ourselves.

  We were both giants, of course. That was mandated. 228.6 centimeters, the spec had called for, balancing off remaining mass. We towered over the more normal-sized people in the room, and particularly over the short little man who wasn’t there.

  The bone structure needed to support such a body properly, even in the slightly reduced gravity of Charon, was a bit different than the human norm, but none of it showed. Other than her size, Darva was an absolutely beautiful human-looking woman. I had taken my own visualization of what she must have looked like before Isil’s changeling spell and produced what I
freely admitted was an idealized version. I probably accented her female figure overmuch, but I plead guilty to doing so without shame. Hell, she’d done the same thing to me.

  In fact, I hadn’t the slightest idea who I looked like, but it was her idea of what the perfect man should be. We were both strongly over-muscled, of course—it was one fine way of compacting mass usefully—but hers only showed when she flexed, while mine showed all over. My face was broad and handsome, and overall we were very good personifications of some ancient god and goddess from man’s primitive times. Both of us, of course, had tremendously long hair and I had a huge beard as well—more mass used up—but that was in an area that could be cut and trimmed.

  But we were not human. She should weigh between 105 and 110 kilos, and I, perhaps 120, but we both had around 180 kilos to contend with and hair really doesn’t take away that much. The balance I had placed in our tails; hers was a bit longer than mine. For pigmentation I’d selected, with her approval, a dark solid bronze, with the hah- a reddish brown. She hadn’t really cared—but we both agreed on anything but green.

  I couldn’t help but notice that her idealized man was as exaggeratedly endowed in one area as my idealized Darva was in the other. Even though the doctor was there, I had to admit I felt a little self-conscious. Well, something would have to be worked out, even with that tail in the way—but there was nothing to do about it now.

  It was hard to tear our gazes away from the reflections, but finally we did and turned back to the trio, who were watching us with great interest.

  “Tailed gods,” the handsome older man in white commented in a pleasant, deep voice. “Fascinating. You could start a whole new religion, the two of you.”

  I chuckled. “I think there are enough of those as it is.”

  “Quite so,” he agreed, then looked to Dr. Yissim expectantly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Yissim said, sounding uncommonly flustered. “Park, Darva—this gentleman is Tulio Koril.”

  I felt a shock go through me. Koril! At last!

  Yissim turned to the little man who wasn’t there. “And this is Dr. Dumonia. He is a Cerberan.”

  We had problems with doorways made for smaller folk, and occasionally ceilings were just a tad too low. Darva bumped her head leaving the lab and I felt a shock. I hadn’t bumped into anything, but I felt every ache she did. It quickly developed that there was more to our exchange than first met the eye—as we’d been warned. The lines of communication were permanent and intact, theory said, and that meant that whatever one felt, the other did too. A minor irritant, but a potential dagger at my throat nonetheless. Whatever was done to her was done likewise to me, no matter where I was. There had to be a range limitation—the energy channels were too tiny to carry—but as long as we were close enough to feel the wa, the wa in one body considered itself the body of the other.

  “The wa considers you one,” Yissim agreed. “You will have to be careful. Still, if you really do care for one another, you should be in for some unique physical sensations on the plus side, too.”

  I saw Darva’s eyebrows rise and her lips form a slight smile. We hadn’t thought of that angle—which really proved out, I might add.

  We were led into a large office, the kind top executives have, complete with outer office staff, receptionists, the whole business, and we got a lot of stares. In the inner office, our tails proved useful for at least one thing. There were few chairs made for people our size but, with the tails, we didn’t need them.

  Koril took his seat behind a large desk in the center of the room and Dumonia took a chair next to him, facing us. Yissim had left us in the outer office, assuring us that when we returned she would have already arranged to check us out physically, and for some sort of living quarters. She offered a barber but Darva just asked for barbering tools—no use somebody getting on a ladder to do us.

  Koril looked at us for a few moments without saying anything. Finally he said, “Well, you two have become some kind of celebrities around here, I must say.”

  “I’ll bet,” I responded. “Still, it’s good to be back among the living again, and maybe even be able to get out and see this great place you’ve built here. I am amazed by it all.”

  “A large share of the credit goes to the good doctor here,” Koril responded, nodding to the little man. “Dr. Dumonia, you see, is the man who makes sure we get our share of Cerberan manufactured goods—and training in their use. He doesn’t usually come along himself, though. In fact, this is the first time I think you’ve ever been here, isn’t it?”

  Dumonia nodded and smiled. “Things are going down all over the system. Matters are coming to a head. It was necessary to coordinate as much as possible with our friends elsewhere, and I could only do so in person. I will admit the trip has been both fascinating and—entertaining.”

  We stared blankly at him. “What’s all this about? And what does it have to do with us?”

  Koril looked at Dumonia, who nodded and sighed. “Three days ago, in a fluke, Marek Kreegan, Lord of Lilith, was assassinated.”

  My heart skipped a beat, and Darva looked at me in concern. “What!” I exclaimed, not even realizing that Darva’s heart had also fluttered for no reason she could fathom.

  The Cerberan nodded. “Despite its flukish nature, such a thing could never have happened without the direct intervention of a Confederacy assassin.”

  I couldn’t suppress my excitement. So I’d done it! Or somebody had anyway. I kind of hoped it was the other me on Lilith.

  “With Kreegan’s death, the brains behind the alien plot are dead as well,” Dumonia went on. “But he was a good planner, so his death, in and of itself, will not affect much. His chief officer, Kobe, ran the basic system anyway and was not only in on everything but was in pretty fair agreement with Kreegan’s aims, although he lacks his dead boss’s imagination. Still, it is a blow. On Cerberus, I have high hopes that, within a matter of months, perhaps weeks, I will be able to gain control of the Lord of Cerberus. It is a tricky business, but I have several plots going at once and I’m confident at least one will succeed. You see, I’m the Lord of Cerberus’s psych.”

  I burst out laughing. “You seem to be a one-man army,” I told him.

  “I only wish it were true,” the Cerberan replied wearily. “Fortunately, you have a well-organized and equipped rebel force here on Charon—but you have additional problems. A—sorc, I think you call them—named Kokul, who knew you well, said you had a conviction that the aliens are physically here and behind the entire Charonese government. He reported this to friend Koril here, and we’d like very much to know if this is only conjecture or whether you have something to base it upon.”

  “A feeling, really,” I answered truthfully. “But the more I’m here, the more I’m convinced of it. “I’ve been among the humans here, high and low, and I’ve been among the changelings. Even the most remote and terrible changeling monstrosity retains its basic humanity somehow—some inner something I can’t really put my finger on that marks them as human.”

  “The soul,” Darva put in.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure I know what a soul is, but that’s as good a word as any. Even the animals here have a certain spark. Everybody and everything—except this man Yatek Morah.”

  “You mean he’s like me—a Warden cypher?” Dumonia asked. “As you all are to me?”

  I shook my head. “No, not that. Physically he’s just a man, all right, but—inside—I don’t know any other way to put it—he’s just not there. That soul, that essence, that intangible—it’s just not there. I’m not the only one who noticed it. Tully did, too.”

  “It’s true,” Darva put in. “I saw him only briefly and from afar, but even then you could sense something—different—about him.”

  “Like a robot?” the Cerberan prompted.

  The comment surprised me, but I had to recall that “robot” was exactly the word I’d used. “Yeah. Very much like that.”

  Dumonia looked a
t Koril, and Koril looked back; both sighed. Finally the former Lord said, “Well, that’s that, then.”

  The Cerberan nodded. “Not from Cerberus.” He turned back to us. “You see, Cerberus is the source of those cute imitative robots that are playing hell with the Confederacy. Never mind how—our powers are quite different from yours. But this Morah’s no Cerberan.”

  “No, he certainly is not,” Koril agreed, then turned to us. “You see, I know Yatek Morah. Or, at least, I knew him. He was born on Takanna, one of the civilized worlds. We were sent here at the same time, so we got to know each other pretty well. That was forty-odd years ago, of course, but he owes his present position to me. He’s a cold, cruel man—but he’s human.”

  “He was,” Dumonia added. “Now he’s far more than that.”

  Koril sighed. “Yes, I think our friends here confirm that. It explains a lot. It explains almost everything.”

  “Well it doesn’t explain anything to me,” Darva put in, showing her old spunk.

  It didn’t explain anything to me either, but I was preoccupied trying to catch hold of something I couldn’t quite corner. Takanna … What the hell was familiar about Takanna?

  “The alien robots are extremely sophisticated,” Dumonia told us. “They are of a sort unknown in the Confederacy, although theoretically possible. In effect, they are quasi-immortal superhumans with the memory and personality of actual human beings.”

  “And this Morah—he’s one of these things?” Darva responded.

  “It very much appears so,” the Cerberan agreed, “but it’s unheard-of. As far as we know, it will only work through a Cerberan. Cerberans, you see, can swap minds—or swap bodies, if you prefer, but only with each other and with these robots. We know of no way that a Charonese could do so—or anybody else.”

  I put Takanna to the back of my mind for a moment to percolate, then rejoined the discussion. “There is a way,” I told them. “Even the Confederacy knows about it. It’s called the Merton Process.”