Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (33 page)

He was sure that they would be back.

But he was content with his reprieve, save for the smell.
Unit
smell again. Chromed steel and ozone and tile and disinfectant and latex. It was the hospital smell, the sickness smell. Even knowing that he was sick, he hated it.

Tentatively, he tested to see if the restraints were there. They weren't. The restraints belonged to a different time, didn't they? He'd grown unsure of his place in time lately.

He smelled the stink and listened to the murmuring voices. He tasted something metallic and harsh on his tongue, and against his skin he felt the play of air chuffing from a blower set somewhere above and behind him. Four of his five senses told him that he had left the dreams behind. He opened his eyes to confirm that he was awake and immediately feared that his senses had betrayed him.

Wires trailed from pads stuck against his skin, pads he couldn't feel. The wires led to machines, machines monitored by short, stocky men in white coats. Bear's friends, that's what he'd been told.

He closed his eyes, but the men in the white coats didn't go away. Behind his eyelids they wore black coveralls studded with pockets and equipment. Round black helmets covered their heads, hiding their wide faces and bushy beards. They were coming for him! Gunfire! The dwarves were rushing forward, attacking.

"Modulate the alpha rhythm," a distant voice said.

Doctors didn't carry guns. Something was wrong.

"Calm down, Mr. Kun. Calm down. You are among friends. No one is going to hurt you."

Friends? With guns? No, with lab coats. Doctors, trying to help him. He knew that. He'd been told that by a friend. Friends were what he needed. A whispered voice, not directed to him, spoke.

"I think it would help if you spoke to him."

"All right." Bear spoke as quietly as the stranger, then again, louder, to Holger. "Everything will be all right, Mr. Kun. Relax. You're in good hands."

He wanted to believe that everything was all right. Bear sounded so sure, so believable. He opened his eyes, but he couldn't see Bear until—against a stranger's whispered advice—he came into view from somewhere beyond the foot of the bed.

"You've been asleep for a while," Bear said, patting Holger's shoulder reassuringly. "You're safe. Well guarded."

He wanted to believe that he was safe, wanted to believe that he could trust this man. Holger remembered that he had already trusted Bear. Bear had taken him to his friends, and had convinced Holger to let them examine him. Holger had agreed to that examination and the sedation that Bear's friends had said was necessary. Holger had trusted Bear, trusted him with his life.

"Now what?" he asked.

Bear looked across Holger to one of the doctors, who had just come into Holger's range of vision. Holger had met this one before—he was the one who had come in with Bear at the Pend Foundation. Wilson was his name.

"Now we consider some of our options," Wilson said. from what you told us before we started poking around, I'd say that you are unaware of how extensively your bodily systems have been modified."

He had told Bear's friends about the modifications of which he was aware, although he hadn't told them everything that the Department's doctors had told him about the capabilities of the implants. But this man spoke of
extensive
modifications. How extensive? Perhaps the Department's doctors had not been honest about how much they had done to him. Just what
had
they done to him? "What sort of modifications?"

"To begin with, as you suspected, there was a tracer signal emitter. A simple subcutaneous implant, nothing special about it. We've already removed it and sent it on a journey far away from here."

That was fine by Holger.

Wilson looked at the screen of the pad that he held. He nodded in satisfaction. "Your reaction to the tracer's fate is encouraging, Mr. Kun. This record will go a long way to convincing some about your sincerity."

Holger didn't care. "What else?"

"The mastoid commo receiver you mentioned is not standard issue. It is, we believe, the source of some of your voices.' When you are out of contact with the ECSS net, as you are now, the occurrence of voices goes down—but only some of the voices go away, yes? I thought so. If you are willing, we believe that we can disable the receiver without danger to you."

Again, fine with him, especially if it quieted the voices. He'd risk "danger" for that. But Wilson's answer was incomplete. "You said
some
of the voices."

"That is correct. We believe that we have identified another source in a systematic monitor which seems to react to specific stimuli by triggering counterstimuli. When the triggering stimuli is specific, the response is specific as well, apparently in the form of memories. We believe that some of the stimulated reveries are based on real memories while others may be altered or completely fabricated experiences. With less specific stimuli, the system responds less specifically, triggering neurochemical emitters to overwhelm your honest reaction with simulated needs or emotional states. We believe that translation of the system's signals into intelligible images is probably responsible for some of the voices as well."

The Department's doctors had given him false memories. They had tried to take away his past. He'd had an "accident" once before. If
that
memory was real. How much had they stolen from him and replaced with their lies? "How can I tell which memories are real?"

"That won't be easy. With time and careful monitoring, we may be able to help you sort them out. No promises."

Always
maybes
and
somedays.
Never any promises. All right, then, he could play the hand he'd been dealt. He'd have to live in the present and let the past be the past, whatever it was. When he encountered a suspicious memory, he'd just have to be suspicious. He didn't like being suspicious all the time, but he had survived such paranoid times before.
That
was a memory of which he
was
sure.

"Tell him the rest," Bear said.

The rest of what?

"Very well," Wilson said reluctantly. "Mr. Kun, there is an extensive network of microfibers paralleling much of your neural network. High-density clusters of these fibers occur in several areas, suggesting subprocessing units at those locations. Near several of them we have detected implanted objects displaying chemical compositions consistent with nanocomputers. We believe these units to be similar to standard medical signal control and interpretation units, such as those used for treatment of sensory and motor control disabilities. Such as interpretation is supported by the presence of several linked nanocomps in the regions of your cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum. We have also detected several dispensers whose locations suggest that they contain neurochemicals such as stimulants, depressants, and curiously enough, memory enhancers.

"The biotechnical and cybernetic implants are very sophisticated. We are impressed. However, no matter how sophisticated the hardware, the software is what drives your enhancements, and its capabilities will take significantly longer to assess."

Holger didn't understand the biological details, but he understood that he had been taken advantage of. "What's it al! for?"

"As I said, the software is the key, and its nature still remains unknown. However, from the placement and nature of the hardware, I speculate that the implanted systems were intended to do more than improve your physical performance. I suspect that the designers intended to affect some of your higher cognitive functions as well."

He didn't like the sound of that. "Which higher cognitive functions?"

"I cannot be exact. That software issue again. However, I believe that they intended to control you, Mr. Kun, to own your heart and mind."

"They brainwashed me?"

"A crude term, but perhaps applicable," Wilson said.

"The stuff they put in to control me, can you take it out?"

Wilson frowned. "Very risky to you, considering how deeply some of the fibers have infiltrated your nervous system."

"How risky?"

"At the moment, I would place your probability of emerging with your mind intact at less than ten percent. There's a fifty-fifty chance you wouldn't survive the surgery at all."

"Lousy odds."

"I wouldn't care to try them," Wilson admitted. "But given more time to study our data and make some more tests, we may be able to improve the odds. Should we try, Mr. Kun?"

He didn't like the idea of the Department controlling his life. They had taken what he had given and demanded more. He hadn't even had a chance to offer. They'd just taken it.

"What have I got to lose?" His mind. His life. Nothing important.

The bastards! The deceitful bastards had stolen his life! They had gutted him and rebuilt him in the image they had wanted. What he had been wasn't good enough for them. What he had given insufficient. Who had given them the right to do what they had done to him?

"The news is not
all
bad, Mr. Kun," Wilson said with exasperating cheeriness. "You have improved eyesight and hearing. Some of the other modifications allow you to perform well beyond the capabilities of a normal man of your strength, by stimulating your brain to produce stress chemicals such as adrenaline and epinephrine. And the dispensers could well be supplying more potent concoctions. We are certain that you are capable of what is colloquially called hysterical strength, and that you will be able to ignore quite severe injuries that do not actually preclude physical function. Additionally, your reaction speed should be quite high. In short, you are stronger, tougher, and faster than an unen-hanced man. We cannot yet determine by how much. Perhaps with a series of tests that I have in mind—"

"You've done enough tests for now," Bear said. "And you've filled this man's ears with too much. He needs quiet and peace."

"But we're not fin—"

"Yes, you are finished. For today, anyway." To Holger, Bear said, "They will talk forever if you let them. They don't care whether you understand, either."

"I want to sit up," Holger said. He wanted to see more of where he was. Bear helped him up, helped him strip away the sensor pads too. The doctors, not one of them taller than Wilson, gathered up their computer pads and coffee cups and left. When only the machines were watching them, Holger asked. "Who are they?"

Bear looked at him quizzically.

"Them. Wilson and the ones like him. They're not..."

"They're dwarves."

They couldn't be—could they? Bear hadn't sounded as though he was making a joke. "Like in stories?"

"They are real as you or I. They are my allies now, as they once were long ago."

"Can you trast them?"

Bear nodded. "They have helped me out quite a bit. You could do worse than trust them. Play them fair and they will play you fair, deceive them and earn their enmity. They are a long-lived people, Mr. Kun, and their memories for grudges outlive them."

"But—" Dwarves in black suits charging forward, weapons firing. "They tried to kill you. Kill us."

"They opposed the return of magic to the world, in a way that they thought might be effective. We—got in their way. It wasn't personal."

Holger had always taken personally any weapons fire directed at him.

"You look troubled, Mr. Kun."

He
was
troubled. Each time he thought about the dwarves, he was reminded that he ought to report such things to the Department. The thought disturbed him, because he suspected he knew it was prompted by the Judas wiring inside liim. But he was disturbed on a level deeper than that. Some older memory fired his distrust and apprehension. The details were unclear, but the implications unpleasant.
The present,
he reminded himself.
Stay in the present.

"Have you ever held a command in battle, Mr. Kun?"

"No."

"I have. Sometimes you have to send men, good men and friends, to their deaths. You know it when you give the orders, but you give the orders anyway and pray that the outcome will be worth their deaths. You pray that their lives will buy what you need bought. Later, if you're right, you
'll
have the chance to pray for their souls and your own, but when the need presents itself in war, you do what you have to do. The dwarves were fighting a war. They did what they believed they had to do."

Holger understood the principle. He might not have commanded in a hot war, but he had commanded operations, and he understood expediency. But he also understood that friends were friends and the enemy was the enemy. Confusing the two was dangerous, ultimately deadly. "They had no right. It wasn't our war," he protested. "We weren't their soldiers to expend."

"You're wrong. It
was
our war. It
is
our war, and I am a soldier in it."

Holger was missing something. "But you fought them. You killed some of them."

"Yes, I did. I didn't know who they were at the time; but even if I had known, I would have fought to stay alive. For while we are fighting the same war, we do not always agree on the strategy. They and I have been allies before, as we are now, but allies do not always agree on strategy. They set a course without consulting me, a course that from their point of view made sense. I might have even agreed, had I known their plan and agreed with their goal. However, I was not consulted when they drafted a plan that allowed for my death so that the end could be achieved. I do not care for strategies that call for me to sacrifice myself. I like to flatter myself feat I can find better solutions. They are a bit more sanguine about such things."