He was tired as he came awake, which seemed odd, somehow upside down. Isn't rest supposed to...? He ordered his eyes to open, but they didn't; and if they did, it was only a little. But just a little. Yes, a little. But still unable to focus. Focus. Yes. Raw shapes forming in a misty soft light. He recognized he was in the infirmary of the ship. In the secure portion. Why secure, he asked himself. He was aware it had been all darkness for him, not even dreaming. Maybe this was now the dream? No, this was consciousness. Real. Sort of. The pain was real. Finally, he realized he was being reconstructed. But it was a lengthy, exhausting process. And he still felt tired.
He now forced his eyes open a little more, slowly, pushing the pain aside. He saw the fuzzy shape of Clegg sitting near him, the only other one in the room.
"Chraa...," he strained, trying his voice.
"Ah, welcome back, sir." Clegg was visibly pleased that H. T. had awakened, even if only a little bit.
"Ch... shw... how... tell shme... schtatus." Every breath proved an effort.
Clegg knew what he wanted and proceeded straight to the point. "It was a 3.2 kilogram ion-ether bomb," he began.
"Schmuggledst," H. T. squeeked.
"Yes, smuggled. The ether composition is why we didn't detect it. Physical damage was fairly extensive, but the explosion was not as bad as it could have been. Your apartments and the conference area were destroyed, as were most of the forward port sections of Decks 19, 20 and 21. Self-sealing structures saved the ship."
"Yesh." The voice was coming better.
"Good news: repairs are moving rapidly. We have already rebuilt and pressurized the outer hull. Also, casualties were light: only 32 injured and 18 killed, including three of your girls."
"Shecretariesh," breathed H. T. His eyes hurt. He closed them to listen.
"Secretaries."
"Lucreshia?"
Clegg drew a breath and shook his head, "One of the three." H. T. winced inside himself at that. He reopened his eyes and glanced at Clegg. Clegg no longer had a left forearm, only a neat bandage three inches below the elbow. So, Clegg had been one of the injured, but had not mentioned it. H. T. didn't notice a left leg was also missing, substituted already by a skilled prosthesis.
"Your body was blasted apart," Clegg continued. "With pieces of it sucked out into space. We readily recovered your core intact and undamaged, shielded, as you know. We reassembled you per plan, using one of your spare bots. A smaller one, unfortunately." Clegg waited.
H. T. snorted a quick laugh. It hurt his chest, but he had to agree: Sometimes size doesn't matter. "How..." It was an effort. "How shlong?" he asked.
"Twelve days."
"Too shlong." H. T. exhaled noisily and closed his eyes again. He was glad he had chosen to shield his core. All manbots regularly backed up their memories, but there were always things you shouldn't lose. Recent images can be vital. He ran through his recent memory. Jackov, crystals, yes; backed up during the return from Belli. Griffons. Yes, especially. But after that: Maximus, Argyle, Gregory, Starling.
Starling. Then, "Who did itch?" H. T. feared the answer.
Clegg paused.
"Clegg?" H. T. was still too tired from the regeneration process to be angry, but he was firm.
"Starling's guard, Jorgo. They had already returned to their ship. We did not find a timer, so it may have been detonated remotely. Not sure why, but Starling suspected him immediately when he heard. He...," Clegg paused, seeking the right word. "He allowed our strike team to invade his ship and seize Jorgo. We struck quickly, with minimal complication. The..." Clegg paused again. "... arrangements for his capture, intruding like we did on his ship, prove to me that Starling was not part of it."
"Ghood." H. T. had been concerned on that point. "And Jhorgo?"
"We interrogated him, of course. I let Starling observe. Jorgo naturally denied knowing anything of it at all, and the psychological profiling seemed to suggest he was telling the truth. But mental imaging is not 100 percent. It can be faked, especially with Wasillians." Clegg used the ethnic slur for Trilar's sterile half-breeds: half Illian and half Drago or Golan. Jorgo was an Illian half-breed. "The physical proof is what did it-explosives residue on his fingers and clothes, his bio-radiation traces in the proximate area of the blast, and, not least, classified data on our security systems found in his quarters. Not sure how he got those, but these finally removed all doubt. Set-up was the only uncertainty. He must have smuggled it in and placed the bomb while you were meeting with Starling. Nevertheless, we had our man. I know it, and so does my interrogation team. And Starling. Once we had it all recorded, I looked to Starling. He was angry beyond reason and wanted him bloated. I agreed. So..."
Clegg did not need to finish the sentence, and H. T. just nodded without expression. "Bloating" involved releasing a culprit naked into deep space, allowing evolved gasses to rapidly cripple and destroy the body from the loss of pressure. The technique was appropriate and not unusual for these cases.
"Something else," Clegg continued. "It appears he acted alone. But the logic doesn't follow, both for this actually to happen and especially given the other incidents we discussed. There has to be more. There are too many Illians implicated in these actions."
"Yes. And Griffonsh," H. T.'s voice still strained, but was clearer now. "Lishen, this manbot process is... always... exhausting. Let me finish... connecting. Then get back to me. In the meansh..." His voice broke. "In the meanshtime, keep looking. Griffonsh. Find them. Find the connecshion."
"Yes, sir," said Clegg. As he started to leave he added, "The crew has been worried. I will tell them you are awake..."
"Wait. No," interrupted H. T., his voice still tired. "I need to be dead."
Clegg looked at him, puzzled for a moment. Then, "Yes. I agree."
"The manbotting didn't take. The core wash too damaged. Interfacesh failed. Exshplain it ash... you need to."
"I agree," Clegg repeated. "It will be so."
H. T. looked at him. "Exchept Shtarling. We will need him. Tell him to... to continue with my lasht instructionsh to him. And he should report to you. You will know how to ushe... what he tellsh you." He slowly blinked his eyes, the fatigue of effort catching up with him. "My being dead... may be of ushe to us."
"Yes. Understood." And Clegg limped from the room.
Alone now in his thoughts, H. T. tried to relax. He was a fearless man, but this assassination attempt scared him at some level. No one had ever come this close before, and so easily. Maybe he was not as immortal as he thought. Through half-closed eyes he looked out a small portal at the stars and smiled thinly. Always his favorite view. He thought of having seen Jackov again on Belli. That big nose of his, like a perpetual trademark. Jackov had "died" at one time, too. Two centuries ago. H. T. had been the one to collect his nearly destroyed core and rebuild him. Then, at his request, he sealed him in that box on Belli. I wonder what it was like for him, H. T. asked himself. Some of their ancient memories together had been good, and some not so good. Both proved a pleasure to recall. But there was something different now. H. T. had thought Jackov's babble about gods and poets had been a joke, playing with the head of his new sidekick. What was his name? Duck? No. Duke? Puke? Hah, he laughed to himself. Luck? No. No. Luke? Yes. Luke something. A worthless, skinny creature. He did not see what Jackov saw in him, but that was Jackov's affair.
Immortal. What had stuck with H. T. was the conversation afterward, after Luke Something had scampered out the door on his errand to find Sledge-and there's an ally worth having. Don't want to be on the wrong side of the Djin. Jackov's seeming jokes about gods and poets revealed a bunch of odd ideas that were actually serious to him. He'd gone reflective stuffed in that box, H. T. thought, like some benighted hermit.
Still there was something compelling in this new Jackov. As he tried to relax, H. T. closed his eyes and thought-activated the still-functioning memecord in his core to re-hear exactly what Jackov had said. Jackov's rambling thoughts were silly, but they had intrigued. Perhaps they would help him relax as he reconnected, take his mind off Illians and Griffons. And assassins. Immortal. There was that word again.
The memecord drew a clear picture. Once again, now in his memory, they walked together toward Compartment Three in Jackov's 101st-floor complex. H. T. had just asked about the meanings in the strange message; but Jackov had responded in an odd way, as though he hadn't heard him, and was explaining the ethereal to a philosophy class. "All existence is cycles and circles," he had begun. "Seeding and harvests to consume and seed once more; life and death and life again; tides; planetary rotations; stars born, shining, exploding and forming again; the Universe itself expanding, stalling, contracting, then exploding to expand again. Trying to be immortal, living linearly without end-no matter how appealing to the ego-is counter to this pervasive, constant cycle of total existence. If there is an open-ended endlessness, it can only be captured by a God, if there is even one of those. We cannot really know. We cannot directly experience what is outside of ourselves, as though we could put the Universe in a bottle and study it. We are also always inside that bottle..."
"Like that box you were in," H. T. had interrupted, bored with the point and trying to change the subject back to the message.
"Yes," Jackov had smiled. "Box or bottle, we have only our six senses. We can only interpret what they tell us, sometimes doing that quite imperfectly. At best, our consciousness can only lend us a sense of process. Oh, sure, perhaps our imaginations might discover some element of how it works; or we might discover some way to manufacture an extension of our existence; or we might fool ourselves into conjuring the illusion of possible immortality. A piece here. A piece there. A bit of memory that survives some several generations. But further ambition is futile, even with these manbotted forms."
Jackov had stopped walking and paused at that point, looking at his hands, manufactured just like H. T.'s. Then, "We seek to be masters of our Universe, H. T. To control it. To control it all. That's the threat from the Griffons. They seek it, too; and in the competition we destroy each other." He made a fist with his right hand, then slowly opened his palm. "Yet, in our hubris, ultimately we lose our sense of why. And of wonder." He resumed walking. "And in that loss we lose the point."
H. T., never quite catching the point in the first place, remained annoyed and unconvinced. "What's with this stuff, Alexi?," he had said at the time. "The Griffons are just the bad guys. We destroy them-or they destroy us-end of story. The rest is just a bunch of crap."
Jackov was unperturbed. "Perhaps," he had said, looking at H. T. "Who knows? But there is a useful lesson. An ancient philosopher once observed that we should just embrace the chaos in our Universe, both what we perceive as good and what we perceive as bad. Beyond that ..." Jackov had shrugged with a grin. "Beyond that, experience cannot prove what our minds cannot embrace. So, we should learn to be uncomfortable with the uncertainty. And live simply to delight in all there is that is accessible. And, of course, delight in one another, where we find ourselves and who we have the privilege to call friends."
"Hmmph," H. T. had grunted, still trying to avoid the thought.
"It's the way we're made," Jackov had said. "We cannot dominate a Universe of which we are merely a part, much less be truly immortal within it. Now ... to our task."
They had now reached Compartment Three, and Jackov passed his hand over an invisible actuator to open a passage. Inside he had barked a command and the room came alight. "Had that since we first encountered the Djin," he said, indicating a screen to the left. It showed the strange message he had sent to H. T. "Still haven't figured it out...."
"Great," H. T. grunted, annoyed since that had been the reason for his original question.
"... Then we found these."
Jackov had headed to the back of the Compartment and pressed some buttons, which opened a coffer to reveal a single, brilliant crystal and the device he had called a minic. The crystal was unique, beautiful, and exuded a soft blue light that seemed to penetrate the walls, illuminating the entire floor. Jackov proceeded to explain that the three things were all connected somehow, including the message, and that he and H. T. needed to work together to figure out how to use them. More importantly, the Griffons clearly were seeking the same thing. "And we need to stay at least one step ahead." Jackov had concluded.
H. T. turned off the memecord and tried finally to fully relax. At least he agreed with the last point: the Griffons were now indeed a threat and needed to be defeated. Solving the issues of crystals, minics, Griffons and assassins had remained very much in the forefront of his mind ever since Jackov had returned. So much so that the encounter on Belli already seemed a lifetime ago.
And yet... Jackov's lengthy sermon somehow stayed with him. Such existential nonsense was still crap he decided, better left to drunks and fools. Or women. What always mattered most was the moment. What you did. What you got. Who you killed. Who you let live. He and Jackov had almost killed each other more than once in their day. Seldom agreed. Hated one another. Allied with one another. Fought with one another. Respected one another. He realized he had missed Jackov over the past 200 years. He was glad Jackov was back, even with his quirky ideas.
This present moment came back to him now. He'd done it a hundred times, manbotting, replacing one body form with a new improved model. He was used to it. Always there was that pain as the mind reached out to connect to its new machine of form. Took a few hours to complete. Bearable, but exhausting. The best thing to do was just sleep through it.
He reached again for that illusive relaxation, still wondering why Jackov's silly philosophy stayed with him. Especially now. Did he seek control of his universe? Certainly: as much as he could have. And why not reach for all of it? And immortality? Probably. Yes, also certainly. Why not? Yet Jackov says it is unattainable, an illusion. H. T. couldn't believe that. He was a proud, confident master of his own fate, a wealthy controller of nations and fortunes and men. He was particularly proud of this ship, which had survived an assassin's blast so well: his idea, his creation, his power, his...immortality.
Immortality. He had been surprised, and the ship had been damaged. Maybe not so immortal. Finally, as a soft, dreamless rest resumed, the irony struck him: he had named his ship Universe.
To be continued.
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