Julian May - Sagittarius Whorl: The Rampart Worlds:, Book 3

Scanned & proofed by unknown.

Cleaned, re-formatted & proofread by nukie.

A Del Rey Book

Copyright 2001 by Starykon Productions, Inc.

B ehold a comatose human guy in a dystasis tank, hooked to a psychotronic apparatus that plays the same lovely dream over and over and over. He is being genetically engineered.

That much he knows, because hes been in one of the damned vats beforesometime, somewhere. The details are a mystery. He drifts in the glass coffin of bubbly oxygen-charged goo, too stoned by the drugs and REMory dream-programming to react rationally during his brief interludes of semiconsciousness.

The wakeful bits, when he manages to force open his eyes and peer myopically through the perfluorocarbon liquid, are fuzzy and surreal and punctuated by stabs of fear and helpless anger. During them, the floater recalls one vivid short-term memory snippet

He sits in a smoke-filled bar in a hollow asteroid in the distant Sagittarius Whorl, and the Haluk smiles at him as his consciousness starts to drain away. He remembers his despairing certainty, in the final instant before oblivion, that the aliens are probably going to subject him to something outrageously weird this time around, having failed to finish him off during their previous assaults and batteries.

He squirms in the dystasis tank, making a futile attempt to swim up, push off the lid, and break free. But his limbs and trunk are firmly clamped in an upright frame. Only his head, gripped less tightly, is able to move a little.

He remembers a few more things.

He can swim. He can cook. He can pilot a starship. He can ride a horse.

Hes a disgrace. Hes a lawyer. Hes a scuba diver. Hes a zillionaire.

He was a cop. He was a suicidal drunk. He was a political gadfly. He was doing something that got him in deepest shit.

When he finishes wrenching his head around uselessly, he sees another transparent-walled container next to his own. Inside it another body is dimly visible in reddish womb-light, a companion in dystasis. Straining, he tries to get a better view of the other person, but finds it impossible.

His mouth opens in a silent roar of frustration. With his lungs and the rest of his respiratory tract full of liquid, his vocal cords are as impotent as those of an unborn baby. The dystasis monitoring equipment detects his frantic muscle contractions and the hormonal flood that indicates an agitated mental state.

Naughty, naughty! His struggles are disrupting the genetic engineering procedure. The apparatus programs deeper anesthesia. He plummets back into slumber mode and the umpteenth dream replay begins.

Hes always with his wife, whose name he cant recall any more than he can remember his own. There is background musicScott Hamilton playing Round Midnight on a tenor saxophone. The bedroom is very large and of a rustic southwestern ranch style, with a high-beamed ceiling and walls of whitewashed adobe, adorned with antique Native American weavings and artwork featuring elegantly lewd pastel flower shapes. Double-glazed sliding doors with parted curtains reveal that its night and snowing hard outside. The sound of the blizzard wind occasionally breaks through cascades of gentle jazz. White drifts are piling up outside on the patio.

He and his wife, young newlyweds, sit side by side on a shearling rug before a blazing fire. Theyre naked, propped happily against each other, sipping Roederer Cristal while they watch the dancing flames. Her hair is ash-blond, rippling after being released from its braided chignon, and reaches halfway down her back. Her eyes are the color of deep ocean waters beyond the reef. She is striking rather than pretty, and her features in repose are solemn until he caresses her and makes her smile.

Time to make love again.

And again and again, as the psychotronic machine endlessly loops his most exquisite memory to facilitate the dystasis procedure.

The poor happy schmuck in the tank is me.

Drifting and dreaming.

***

Tap tap tap.

Someone spoke, an alien voice filtered through a translator device. How interesting. It looks as though he is waking up.

Someone else: This is the template individual, Servant of Servants. The original. The transformed human subject is recovering in another room, attended by ones technicians. We will interview him shortly, just as soon as he is lucid.

Lets see if this creature recognizes one.

Tap tap tap.

I slowly opened my eyes. The room outside was dimly lit, as always, with most of the illumination coming from a bank of alien equipment some distance away. The dark floor was intricately veined with a glowing red web that converged on my tank and the one beside mine, which was now empty.

Three Haluk stood looking at me, two males and a female, all wearing translator pendants. The tallest of the aliens knocked on the glass wall to get my attention as though I were a sulky specimen in an aquarium.

Tap tap tap. Wah! Can you hear one, Earth life-form?

Of course I could. My ears worked just fine while submerged in the oxygenated glop, and he must have known it.

He pursed his lips in the racial smile-equivalent and twiddled his four-fingered hand in mock playfulness. Do you recall this ones identity?

With difficulty, I focused my eyes and concentrated.

Well, sure. The last time Id seen him, he was wearing a conservative human-style business suit of dark green with faint white pinstripes, tailored to set off his wasp waist and accessorized by a scarlet foulard scarf and a diamond stickpin. He was now attired in exotic haberdashery appropriate to his high station: bronze-purple robes with glittering jeweled trim, an elaborate spiked diadem of platinum, and a matching necklace inset with large fossil cabochons. But that ugly blue face was unmistakable, and so were the oddly beautiful eyes with their sardonic, hyperintelligent glint.

The perfluorocarbon bath had rendered me mute, but I snarl-mouthed: You friggin xeno bastard! Damned right I know you. Youre the Servant of the Servants of Luk, the head honcho of the Sovereign Haluk Confederation.

Bravo, he said dryly. The Haluk arent telepathic, but my response had evidently been clear enough. Please accept the profound gratitude of this one and of the Council of Nine. Thanks to youhe nodded toward the tenantless second tankand to the turncoat rascal with whom you shared your vital substance, one has high hopes of an accelerated schedule for our Grand Design.

Suddenly, a surprisingly concrete recollection popped into my skull. The alien leader and I had had a nasty confrontation a couple of years ago outside the Assembly Chamber of the Commonwealth of Human Worlds in Toronto. At the invitation of Liberal Party members sympathetic to Reversionist principles, I had finally testified about something important having to do with the Haluk and their trade treaty with humanity. My speech had really pissed off the Servant of Servants and the members of his alien entourage, as well as a sizable percentage of the Assembly Delegates.

But what had I said? And who the hell was I?

I hadnt a clue.

The Servant said, Feeling all right, are you? Archiator Malotuwak assures one that you came through the human-to-human genetic exchange in fine fettle. Unfortunately, we cant let you out of the dystasis tank just yet. We require a second demiclone.