“You silly girl. I’ve killed the likes of you by the dozen.”
A fight between two speshes is a very boring thing, unless you watch it in slow motion, speed reduced about ten times.
Sey-Zo was swept onto the floor when the exquisite wooden table broke in half under someone’s blow, which had missed its target. Two figures whirled around the lounge like the wind, and the sounds of blows delivered or blocked thickened into a continuous hum.
This lasted four seconds—then stopped.
Ex-Paul Lourier stood near the wall, aiming a small handgun at Holmes. Kim was frozen helplessly in his arms—the agent had her throat in a stranglehold, as he kept pressing his half-bent elbow harder and harder, forcing the girl’s head farther back.
“Drop the ‘Bulldog,’” the agent repeated. “Or I will kill both you and the girl.”
Sherlock Holmes must have realistically assessed his capacity to fight an agent-spesh. He spread his fingers, and the police pistol with its thick, ribbed barrel fell to the floor. In the silence that followed, the most distinct sound was the rustling of the cleaning-beetle that came running out of the corner to feel the dropped object. The pistol must have not had the characteristics of trash—the little beetle went away disappointed.
“To protect the innocent …” the agent sneered. “You’re just a robot with a human body. Do you actually think any of us will get out of this alive?”
Holmes was silent, and the agent nodded in surprise.
“But you will walk away from here. I have no intention of killing you people. Not even her.” He kicked Sey-Zo without looking at her, and the Zzygou let out a weak moan. “Nope, I won’t kill you. Though for different reasons.”
“What are you after?” asked Holmes.
“You figured it out perfectly. I want war. The liberation of Eben. A new order in the galaxy.”
“You are a madman.” Holmes remained calm. “Your owners will get rid of you. You’ve accomplished your mission. People like you are never left alive. Even the most valuable agent has a limit. Having completed his main assignment, he himself becomes a danger. Let Kim go and help us all get out. I swear I’ll turn you in to the human justice system, and not to the Zzygou.”
“Who told you I’m only an agent?” And here, the man who used to be Paul Lourier burst into laughter. Flexed his arm—the half-throttled Kim collapsed at his feet. “Too bad you interfered with me. The girl is a delight … I wouldn’t mind a couple of minutes’ sparring.”
With a sinking heart, Alex watched Kim. Then suddenly she stirred … feebly, and yet it wasn’t a convulsion.
Alex shifted his gaze to the agent. All the features of Paul Lourier had already disappeared from his face. He put on weight and looked like a man of forty or fifty: sturdy, manly, and dark-complexioned, his features slightly irregular—the outcome of too many genetic alterations.
“What age would your bone analysis show?” asked Alex.
The agent looked at him, nodded.
“You are quite a guy, Pilot. You amaze me. The test would show forty-nine standard Earth years.”
“I know who he is …” Janet whispered close to the pilot’s ear. Her voice had lost all its strength, turned helpless and confused.
“I do, too,” Alex said. “You’re forty-nine Earth years old … or forty-four Ebenian years?”
“Exactly. Holmes was right: those who were taken prisoner during the Battle of Pokryvalo are demoralized. They’ve been brainwashed, and they are being monitored …” He glanced at Janet, and his look had a hint of pity. “But not all patriots of humanity were known to Imperial Security.”
“Angry Christ …” said Janet. “The Human Control Committee!”
“Ever at your side, Major Janet Ruello.” The agent bowed mockingly. “You still have a chance, Major. You haven’t fulfilled your humanist duty. You haven’t liquidated the Other, though you had every chance to do so. But I do understand the gravity of the psychological treatment you’ve been subjected to … and I can issue a conditional pardon—for the duration of the military conflict. Your decision?”
“I … I …”
Alex felt that Janet was shaking all over. He touched her hand.
“I am bound by an oath I swore to the ship’s captain. I cannot.”
“Janet Ruello, you’re looking to excuse your treason.” The agent was studying the black woman’s face with a mixture of pity and disgust. “All right. As a senior officer, I release you from the obligations you were forced to make.”
Janet was silent.
“You had your chance, Major.” The agent seemed a bit surprised. “You’ve made your choice.”
He bent down over the Zzygou, then jerked her up in front of him, holding her by the hair with one hand.
“What are you going to do with us?” asked Morrison. “Whoever you might be, you are human, and …”
“I am human, but the question is—are you?” the agent inquired. “Don’t worry. This force field barrier is very handy. Otherwise I’d have to kill you all. As soon as the military actions between humanity and the Zzygou begin, I’ll leave you.”
Holmes mockingly raised one eyebrow.
“The warship will leave, and my friends will come,” said the agent.
The Zzygou stirred and hissed something to him.
“Ah, regaining the gift of speech, are we?” the agent jeered. He lowered his hand into his pocket, then raised it again—holding a small pocketknife. “Then it’s time I do something about that.”
The next second Alex had to look away. It seemed everyone followed his example, except for Holmes. The detective remained sitting still, his back straight, his icy eyes watching what was happening.
The alien let out a gurgling, gagging sigh. Something soft and small plopped down on the carpet.
This time the cleaning-beetle decided it had some work to do. The Zzygou moaned inarticulately, pressing her hands to her bloody mouth. Drops of red blood were streaming down through her clenched fingers. The little beetle bustled around at her feet, eating up the stains. But to take the severed tongue away, it had to call for another cleaner’s help.
“You scum,” said Alex. “What are you—executioner-spesh?”
The agent shook his head. “My dear Captain, specialization of the psyche is the fate of slaves. Didn’t you say so yourself? That’s the way it was on Eben, and that’s the way it is in the Empire.”
He wiped his bloodstained hands against the Zzygou’s dress, shoved her roughly into a corner. And then, having taken out his pistol, he fired it four times in a row. Alex didn’t manage to recognize the model of the firearm—something operating on low-temperature plasma. Perhaps it was of Ebenian make, or maybe exclusive to Imperial Security. The Zzygou wheezed from the pain, coughing up blood. Her legs were scorched at the knees, and her arms at the elbows. C-the-Third, letting out a horrible, piercing shriek, started thrashing and writhing in the clutches of the force field.
“You’re a butcher,” said Alex.
“No.” Paul Lourier shook his head. “They’re tough buggers. Sey-Zo will survive … long enough to hear the news of the obliteration of her entire race. She even has a chance to be the last living Zzygou in the galaxy.”
He lowered his gun into his pocket. Smiled—openly, with natural ease.
“Consider me whatever you like. An executioner. A xenophobe. A psycho. But really, I’m just an ordinary man. A normal human, making normal plans for the future. The Zzygou are our main rivals in the galaxy. The Bronins don’t share our attitude toward expansion. They have long given up conquering new territories. The Fenhuans need to colonize planets that don’t suit us. With the Cepheideans—we can coexist just fine, and our alliance with the Zzygou is the only thing that prevents us from assimilating new planets together. The Church of the Angry Christ are insane idealists. And the Ebenian speshes—nothing but cannon fodder. The Imperial speshes are all emasculated degenerates. Imperial power is just a screen for trans-galactic corporations.
The Empire has, to its shame, lost its fighting fist, the planet Eben. Lost all those who have always served humans … real humans. Like me. Those of us who really rule the universe. We got rid of the last Emperor too late … he was a real Emperor, I admit, but he lapsed into stupid idealism. Now all of that can be reversed.”
“Why are you telling us all this, Committee rat?” cried Janet.
“Not just to kill you off for knowing way too much,” smirked the agent. “You can’t understand it … valiant Ebenian Fleet Major Janet Ruello … Ah! The hopes I had for you! But you let me down. I’m not afraid of your testimonies. In ten more hours, they won’t mean a thing. But I want all you self-satisfied scumbags to know who rules the universe. To know it and remember it for the rest of your lives! And it isn’t you, spiritually mutilated speshes. And not the orthodox naturals, who get drunk on one glass of vodka, come down with the sniffles, and aren’t any good for any job. Those who have absorbed all the strength of genetic alterations but created no blocks in their consciousness—they are your real masters! They rule the planets, they move billions, and they decide between war and peace. And all that’s intended for you—are illusions. Sweet dreams. False belief in your own exclusiveness. And that’s the way it has always been and always will be. Always. Masters and slaves never switch places … my dear, harmonious crew. Your place will always be reserved for you. In an asteroid mine. Behind an office computer. At a ship’s control panel. In combat line with your ray gun.”
He was clearly enjoying what was happening. He was on a roll—this Imperial Security agent, Ebenian Human Control officer, secret Imperial politician … and whoever else he was, this spesh who wasn’t a spesh. Unfettered by anything—neither the moral barriers of speshes, nor the ancient ethics of naturals. And Alex caught himself thinking that he could understand the agent’s overwhelming need to unburden himself. Perhaps for the first time in decades. To shed the latest in a long line of masks he’d grown sick of, so that now, standing there with his own—or was it?—face before his recent friends, he could tell them everything he really had on his mind.
“You have nothing to say? Are some of you surprised, perhaps?” The agent looked around at them. “Or maybe you believed that ancient gibberish about human equality? How much of that have we had! Christianity, free enterprise, communism, the genetic revolution … And always the same thing—equality of opportunity … the thing than never existed in the first place. Social origin is what has always determined everything. Starting capital, social status, the choice made by parents—that’s what determines your destiny. And yours has been decided a long, long time ago. The destiny of a slave. And the slave-parents told the slave-children, ‘All those around you are chattel, and you are the master.’ And the slave-children said to each other, ‘We’ll be masters of all Life.’ But everything has already been decided. Long before your time. And the real rulers are those who are silent. Standing silently in the shadows. But if we have to …”
Alex had been watching Kim for a minute or so now. The girl grew quiet … she was regrouping.
And now she dealt her blow. Right from the floor, without getting up, without even looking at the agent, by hearing alone—she recoiled, kicking the agent in the stomach with both feet, as she pushed up on her arms and jumped to her feet with a springy bounce.
He didn’t seem to even notice the blow that had the power to rip through a normal man’s entrails. His body had been so stuffed with alterations that the agent only swayed a little—and the next moment Kim was once again frozen in front of him, her arms cruelly twisted behind her back, her face awful with the pain, or with those sensations that are pain substitutes in a fighter-spesh.
“If we have to, we act independently,” the agent said, finishing his phrase. “Didn’t I tell you I don’t want to kill you, Kim O’Hara? Calm down. People like you are always in demand, any place you go. Do your work and be happy during your long and interesting life.”
Kim laughed, spat—unsuccessfully trying to turn her head far enough back to hit the agent. “You … master of Life … you spend it under other people’s names, in other people’s bodies … groveling before those of us you call your slaves!”
The agent burst into laughter. “You’re like an impotent actor who can only screw when he plays Casanova … what are you so proud of?”
“That’s a good idea.” The former engineer of Mirror glanced over at Generalov. “I’m so sick of that sniveling sodomite!”
“But you liked it!” Puck shouted. It seemed he was stung to his very core. “But you—”
The agent no longer paid any attention to the rest of them. The blows that he landed on Kim seemed more like soft touches—but the girl went limp, her head lowered feebly.
“Monster …” whispered Janet. “God … what a monster.”
“They’re all monsters,” said Alex.
Janet looked at him with hatred. “It’s all your order … the force field. You should have known that a fighter-spesh would break right through it.”
“I should have,” Alex agreed. “But we needed this … moral striptease. I had no idea it would end up being a real striptease.”
The agent tossed Kim down onto the floor. Bent over, ripping off her clothes.
“Excuse me for not inviting you all to participate, my dear colleagues,” he said through clenched teeth. “But those of you with a penchant for voyeurism can satisfy your curiosity.”
He heaved himself heavily on top of the girl. Despite the monstrosity of what was happening, Alex was suddenly sharply hit by a strange, unpleasant sensation of a similarity between the rapist and the victim. The sturdy, stalwart agent and the slender, fragile girl—they seemed to be parts of a whole. They made up some kind of perverted but integral duo. It was as if they had been made for each other …
Alex lowered his eyelids. Whispered with his lips alone:
“Captain’s access. No reply necessary.”
Less than three and a half yards away from him, the Ebenian counter-intelligence agent was taking possession of Kim O’Hara. Alex waited four unbearably long seconds, ready to give the rest of his order to the ship at any moment. Waited four endless centuries, before the agent screamed.
There was nothing human about the sound of his scream. Mixing within it were pain and a panic-stricken, endlessly ancient terror, rooted in the very depths of the subconscious.
“Remove the lounge block!” This time Alex yelled out loud, jumping up.
Sherlock Holmes, of course, reacted faster. When Alex leaped toward the agent, who was twitching convulsively on top of the half-undressed Kim, the detective’s ‘Bulldog’ was already pressed to the rapist’s temple. Holmes’s other hand had dug into the agent’s neck with the strength of steel pincers.
“Get up!” snarled Holmes.
The agent didn’t seem to hear him. Or perhaps he thought both the pistol and the vertebrae-crushing hand a meaningless trifle, next to what he was experiencing at that moment.
“Release him, Kim,” said Alex, catching the girl’s glance—the self-composed, harsh, willful look of an agent-spesh. “It’s all right, Kim. You did great.”
Kim hesitated for a moment. Then shoved the agent off with one abrupt push. Holmes didn’t let him fall over again, but hoisted him up—the way the agent had himself just recently held the Zzygou. The detective’s fingers were still gripping the agent’s vertebrae, and the skin ripped by his nails oozed blood. The gun seemed to have grown into his temple.
“Janet!” cried Alex. “Attend to Sey-Zo, she’s bleeding to death!”
C-the-Third didn’t have to be ordered, he was already bustling over the Zzygou’s body. The black woman asked:
“Why me?”
“Because you’re trained in it! You’re an executioner-spesh, and you know the Zzygou anatomy!”
After a moment’s wavering, Janet Ruello joined the clone’s efforts. Alex helped Kim get up and pull on her torn-up slacks. He said quietly:
“Forgive me,
baby. I couldn’t interfere earlier.”
Kim looked at him seriously, nodded.
“I know. He’s too strong … he would’ve killed everybody, even if we’d all attacked at once.”
Dr. Watson, in the meantime, was fixing the force field handcuffs onto the agent’s hands. As soon as they snapped closed, the metal bracelets reached for each other with enormous force, twisting the arms that, up until that moment, had been pressed to the agent’s groin. He was still whimpering quietly, twisting this way and that, trying to see his bloodstained groin.
“What … what did you do to him?” Generalov’s countenance had changed. What he had just seen seemed to have frightened him more than anything else in his whole life. Kim didn’t answer. Wincing, she was feeling her body all over.
“Do you need help?” asked Dr. Watson, businesslike. “Kim?”
The girl shook her head. Answered with a hint of irony:
“No, probably not. I’m tough. All I need is a shower …”
She looked at Alex again. And asked, “How did you know about this specification of mine? It isn’t documented anywhere.”
“A virtual acquaintance of yours gave me a hint.”
Kim’s eyes narrowed. She nodded, with a slight hesitation.
Alex soothingly patted her shoulder. Went over to the Zzygou.
She was alive and conscious. And that, however cynical it might sound, was the most important thing.
“Lady Sey-Zo,” said Alex, softly pushing aside C-the-Third, who was bandaging the alien’s elbows. “Muster your strength, Lady Sey-Zo. The future of our races now depends on the strength of your will.”
Dim with pain, split into hundreds of facets, the Zzygou’s eyes looked at him. The alien nodded.
“Have you been convinced that your companion’s murderer is the man who’s been disguised as our engineer?”
She nodded again.
“Lady Sey-Zo … everything is now in your power. If we leave him alive, then the investigation could possibly lead us to the other members of this plot. To the Ebenian agents entrenched in Imperial Security, to the corrupt politicians who have dealings with them, to the heads of weaponry-producing corporations … to all those who were interested in a bloodbath.”