Space Stations Part 31

"You see now? Check it. Try something-to move your arm, for instance. You haven't got arms."

Katonji makes a thin smile. "Computer simulations do not have bodies, though they have some of the perceptions that come from bodies."

"P-Perceptions from where?"

"From the fool Benjan, of course."

"Me."

"He didn't realize, having burned up all that time on Gray, that we can penetrate all diagnostics. Even the Station's. Technologies, even at the level of sentient molecular plasmas, have logs and files.

Their data is not closed to certain lawful parties."

He swept an arm (not a real one, of course) at the man's face. Nothing. No contact. All right, then...

"And these feelings are-"

"Mere memories. Bits from Benjan's Station self."

Katonji smiles wryly.

He stops, horrified. He does not exist. He is only binary bits of information scattered in ferrite memory cores. He has no substance, is without flesh.

"But... but, where is the real me?" he says at last.

"That's what you're going to tell us."

"I don't know. I was... falling. Yes, over Gray-"

"And running, yes-I know. That was a quick escape, an unexpectedly neat solution."

"It worked," Benjan said, still in a daze. "But itwasn't me?"

"In a way it was. I'm sure the real Benjan has devised some clever destination, and some tactics.

You-his ferrite inner self-will tell us, now, what he will do next."

"He's got something, yes..."

"Speak now," Katonji said impatiently.

Stall for time. "I need to know more."

"This is a calculated opportunity," Katonji said offhandedly. "We had hoped Benjan would put together a solution from things he had been thinking about recently, and apparently it worked."

"So you have breached the Station?" Horror flooded him, black bile.

"Oh, you aren't a complete simulation of Benjan, just recently stored conscious data and a good bit of subconscious motivation. A truncated personality, it is called."

As Katonji speaks, Benjan sends out tracers and feels them flash through his being. He summons up input and output. There are slabs of useless data, a latticed library of the mind. He can expand in polynomials, integrate along an orbit, factorize, compare coefficients-so they used my computational self to make up part of this shambling construct.

More. He can fix his field-there, just so-and fold his hands, repeating his mantra. Sound wells up and folds over him, encasing him in a moment of silence.

So the part of me that still loves the Sabal Game, feelsdrawn to the one-is-all side of being human-they got that, too.

Panic. Do something. Slam on the brakes- He registers Katonji's voice, a low drone that becomes deeper and deeper as time slows. The world outside stills. His thought processes are far faster than an ordinary man's. He can control his perception rate.

Somehow, even though he is a simulation, he can tap the real Benjan's method of meditation, at least to accelerate his time sense. He feels a surge of antic.i.p.ation. He hums the mantra again and feels the world around him alter. The trickle of input through his circuits slows and stops. He is running cool and smooth. He feels himself cascading down through ruby-hot levels of perception, flashing back through Benjan's memories.

He speeds himself. He lives again the moments over Gray. He dives through the swampy atmosphere and swims above the world he made. Molecular master, he is awash in the sight-sound-smell, an ocean of perception.

Katonji is still saying something. Benjan allows time to alter again and Katonji's drone returns, rising- Benjan suddenly perceives something behind Katonji's impa.s.sive features. "Why didn't you follow Benjan immediately? You could find out where he was going. You could have picked him upbefore he scrambled your tracker beams."

Katonji smiles slightly. "Quite perceptive, aren't you? Understand, we wish only Benjan's compliance."

"But if he died, he would be even more silent."

"Precisely so. I see you are a good simulation."

"I seem quite real to myself."

"Ha! Don't we all. A computer who jests. Very much like Benjan, you are. I will have to speak to you in detail, later. I would like to know just why he failed us so badly. But for the moment we must know where he is now. He is a legend, and can be allowed neither to escape nor to die."

Benjan feels a tremor of fear.

"So where did he flee? You're the closest model of Benjan."

I summon winds from the equator, cold banks of sullen cloud from the poles, and bid them crash.

They slam together to make a tornado such as never seen on Earth. Lower gravity, thicker air-a cauldron.

It twirls and snarls and spits out lightning knives.

The funnel touches down, kisses my crust- -and there are Majiken beneath, whole packed canisters of them, awaiting my kiss.

Everyone talks about the weather, but only I do anything about it.

They crack open like ripe fruit.

-and you dwindle again, hiding from their pursuing electrons. Falling away into yourmicrostructure.

They do not know how much they have captured.

They think in terms of bits and pieces and he/you/we/I are not. So they do not know this- You knew this had to come As worlds must turn And primates must prance And givers must grab So they would try to wrap their world around yours.

They are not dumb.

And smell a beautiful beast slouching toward Bethlehem.

Benjan coils in upon himself. He has to delay Katonji. He must lie- -and at this rogue thought, scarlet circuits fire.

Agony. Benjan flinches as truth verification overrides trigger inside himself.

"I warned you." Katonji smiles, lips thin and dry.

Let them kill me.

"You'd like that, I know. No, you will yield up your little secrets."

Speak. Don't just let him read your thoughts. "Why can't you find him?"

"We do not know. Except that your sort of intelligence has gotten quite out of control, that we do know. We will take it apart gradually, to understand it-you, I suppose, included."

"You will...""Peel you, yes. There will be nothing left. To avoid that, tell us now."

-and the howling storm breaches him, bowls him over, shrieks and tears and devours him. The fire licks flesh from his bones, chars him, flames burst behind his eyelids- And he stands. He endures. He seals off the pain. It becomes a raging, white-hot point deep in his gut.

Find the truth. "After... after... escape, I imagine- yes, I am certain-he would go to the poles."

"Ah! Perfect. Quite plausible, but-which pole?"

Katonji turns and murmurs something to someone beyond Benjan's view. He nods, turns back and says, "We will catch him there. You understand, Fleet cannot allow a manifestation of his sort to remain free after he has flaunted our authority."

"Of course," Benjan says between clenched teeth.

(But he has no teeth, he realizes. Perceptions are but data, bits strung together in binary. But they feel like teeth, and the smoldering flames in his belly make acrid sweat trickle down his brow.) "If we could have antic.i.p.ated him, before he got on 3-D..." Katonji mutters to himself. "Here, have some more-"

Fire lances. Benjan wants to cry out and go on screaming forever. A frag of him begins his mantra.

The word slides over and around itself and rises between him and the wall of pain. The flames lose their sting. He views them at a distance, their cobaltfacets cool and remote, as though they have suddenly become deep blue veins of ice, fire going into glacier.

He feels the distant gnawing of them. Perhaps, in the tick of time, they will devour his substance. But the place where he sits, the thing he has become, can recede from them. And as he waits, the real Benjan is moving. And yes, he does know where...

Tell me true, these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds say. All right- "Demonax crater. At the rim of the South Polar glacier."

Katonji checks. The verification indices bear out the truth of it. The man laughs with triumph.

All truths are partial. A portion of what Benjan is/was/will be lurks there.

Take heart, true Benjan.

For she is we and we are all together, we mere Ones who are born to suffer.

Did you think you would come out of this long trip alive?

Remember, we are dealing with the most nasty of all species the planet has ever produced.

Deftly, deftly- We converge. The alabaster Earthglow guides us.

Demonax crater lies around us as we see the ivory lances of their craft descend.

They come forth to inspect the ruse we have gathered ourselves into. We seem to be an entire ship and buildings, a shiny human construct of lunargrit. We hold still, though that is not our nature.

Until they enter us.

We are tiny and innumerable, but we do count.

Microbial tongues lick. Membranes stick.

Some of us vibrate like eardrums to their terrible swift cries.

They will discover eventually. They will find him out.

(Moisture spatters upon the walkway outside.

Angry dark clouds boil up from the horizon.) They will peel him then. Sharp and cold and hard, now it comes, but, but- (Waves hiss on yellow sand. A green sun wobbles above the seascape. Strange birds twitter and call.) Of course, in countering their a.s.sault upon the Station I shall bring all my h.o.a.rded a.s.sets into play.

And we all know that I cannot save everyone.

Don't you?

They come at us through my many branches. Their smallness has its uses.

Up the tendrils of ceramic and steel. Through my microwave dishes and phased arrays. Sounding me with gamma rays and traitor cyber-personas.

They have been planning this for decades. But I have known it was coming for centuries.

The Benjan singleton reaches me in time. Nearly.

He struggles with their minions. I help. I am many and he is one. He is quick, I am slow. That he is one of the originals does matter to me. I harbor the sameaffection for him that one does for a favorite finger.

I hit the first one of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds square on. It goes to pieces just as it swings the claw thing at me.

d.a.m.n! it's good to be back in a body again. My muscles bunching under tight skin, scents swarming thick and rich, lungs huffing in hot breaths, happy hot primate murder-joy shooting adrenaline-quick.

One of the Majiken comes in slow as weather and I cut him in two. Been centuries since I even thought of doing somethin' like that. Thumping heart, yelling, joyful slashing at them with tractor spin-waves, the whole business.

A h.e.l.l of a lot of 'em, though.

But she is there. I swerve and dodge and she stays right with me. We waltz through the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

Shards flying all around and vacuum sucking at me, but her in my veins and throat-tightening pure joy in my chest.

Strumming notes sound through me and it is she Fully in me, at last Gift of the Station in all its s.p.a.ces For which we give thanks yea verily in this the ever-con- suming moment- Then there is a pain there and I look down and my left arm is gone.

Just like that.

And she of ages past is with me now.-and even if he is just digits running somewhere, he can relive scenes, the grainy stuff of life. He feels a rush of warm joy. Benjan will escape, will go on. Yet so will he, the mere simulation, in his own abstract way.