Kevin Anderson - Resurrection, Inc.

Gregor saw his gaze and spoke by Danal’s ear, startling him. “She stood up by herself. I was beside her, and we couldn’t figure out what to do. I was going to shout or something. But when Julia saw you were going to be sacrificed… well, she stood up. By herself.” A tone of wonder drifted into his words.

In quiet amazement Danal went over to the female Servant, afraid to ask. “Julia. Do you remember anything else?”

She stood in silence, but did not deny what he asked. Danal didn’t feel his hope slip away so quickly this time. A faint mist like the shadow of a tear formed over her eyes. He thought he noticed the faintest tremor in her lips.

“You’d better come over here, Danal,” Laina said huskily, holding her injured wrist.

Reluctantly the nurse/tech took him near one of the fountains, stepping over motionless robed forms on the floor. With her foot she pushed aside several of the dead cultists, revealing a slim female form clothed in a new Coven Manager’s robe.

“Ah, no,” Danal said as he knelt down, but his throat was so dry he doubted if any words had come out. The Servant pushed aside the hood and tried to read an expression on the disfigured lumpy face, but he could not interpret her death mask. Some of the fluorescent red wine lay in a sticky trickle down her cheek. Strangely, Danal discovered he had new depths of grief within him

“Zia,” he mumbled, “you knew better. You knew so much better.”

“Well, what do we do now?” Laina asked. “Who do we tell? The Enforcers?”

Some of the other Wakers looked at Danal, then Gregor, then Danal again.

“Nathans ran the Enforcers Guild,” Jones muttered, almost to himself, and then he strode back out into the main chamber among the fallen bodies, as if running away from what he had just said. Danal stared after him, wide-eyed.

“I’m not sure if I trust that man completely,” Laina muttered.

“He did help. And at a crucial time,” Gregor countered.

“He’s still an Elite Guard. But I’ll keep an open mind.” She frowned uncomfortably. “Choice of trust isn’t exactly a luxury we can afford right now.”

The unconscious neo-Satanists would begin to stir soon. The other Wakers forcibly kept all the nonsuicidal worshipers from leaving the chamber, though many wanted to run into the night and hide from the horrors before them. Only the threat of being caught out after curfew held them back. A few volunteered to help separate the living and the dead from the motionless forms crumpled on the floor.

“Excuse me, folks,” Rikki interrupted in a very mature voice, “but we have to figure out what we’re going to do.”

Danal pondered a long moment, and suddenly nothing seemed at all simple. They had defeated Nathans, effectively stopped neo-Satanism; they should have been having a victory party, but things…

“We’ll tell our story, I guess. Put it on The Net for everyone to see, before it gets distorted. There’s certainly enough evidence, enough proof, enough witnesses.” His voice didn’t contain a great deal of enthusiasm, and none of the others responded until Rikki finally spoke.

“Blaming all this on Nathans alone isn’t going to work. You know that, don’t you? These people lying poisoned, the tricks, the sham—somebody’s going to find a scapegoat. And we all know what great scapegoats a bunch of spooky Servants would make.

“ And in a few minutes we’re going to be in a room full of revived fanatics. They’ll be angry, or worse. They’ve already proven they’re missing a few circuits in the CPU.” He tapped his temple and made a face. “Any one of them can make us speak a confession or shut us up forever, with a single Command phrase. We don’t have any way to fight against it.”

The others fell uneasily silent. Gregor looked down at the stained pentacle on the floor.

“Unless—” Gregor stopped, at a loss for words. Danal watched him in desperate fascination, and waited.

“I had an idea a long time ago, but it didn’t seem worth trying. Now, maybe we have to.” He swallowed, then shrugged. “Well, what about a paradox, something that might burn out your Servant programming? Like a Command you can’t possibly obey.”

“Do it,” Danal said without a pause. He immediately knew what Gregor was suggesting. “To me. ”

“Now, wait a minute.” Gregor raised his large hand. “Think about this—it could burn out your programming, or it could just as well put your mind into an infinite loop. Make you worse than him .” He indicated the Nathans-zombie, still silent and motionless. “We can’t lose you, Danal. Your story is a key point in our survival.”

Some of the other Wakers murmured, but Danal silenced them all. “We don’t have time for philosophizing, Gregor. We’ve got to take our best shot. Before it’s too late for us.” Placatingly he added, “Look, I’m not trying to be a martyr—I’ve done that once and it wasn’t very pleasant. But keep in mind, all of you, that I’m not much of a hook to hang your hopes on if I’m bound by Servant programming.

“Look at it this way—the Wakers themselves are undeniable proof that Servants can get their memories back. If your paradox overloads me, you can still tell my story… you can even set me up as your scapegoat, if you like. Say I was burned out in my final battle with Nathans, and leave it at that. They’ll believe it. They’ll want to.”

Gregor looked at the others for some kind of support, but all of them remained silent, ready to accept Danal’s decision. Out in the main chamber, some of the unconscious neo-Satanists started to stir.

“Freedom of choice,” Danal said. “The Command phrase takes that away from me, but right now I choose to take the risk.” He sat down cross-legged on the floor, looking up at the big Waker.

Gregor’s expression turned sullen but resigned. “I pray it works. Now, listen carefully and get this right.” He drew a deep breath, then spoke sharply.

“Danal! Command: Obey no Commands!”

Obey no Commands. Simple enough.

But then he could not obey the Command that forbid him to obey Commands. Therefore he was forced to obey, which compelled him not to obey—

His conscious mind recognized the paradox and dismissed it as unsolvable. But the microprocessor and the Servant programming kept churning away relentlessly, forcing the problem around in circles in search of a logical conclusion… when it had none. Infinite loop.

Danal could not move a muscle, and his vision spiraled in toward black as the Servant programming drew upon more and more of his resources to solve the paradox. His nerves and senses were shut down as extraneous input, irrelevant to the problem.

Once more Danal floated in a blackless void, with nothing, not even the perceptions and violent afterimages of Death to join him. The time continuum passed by outside, but he was isolated from it, deprived of everything.

He felt buried alive, smothered by his sensory vacuum. In between. Between life and death and life again… for the second time. Out of the senseless silence came echoes of lost sounds, the growing hum, the unearthly chimes. The void closed up around him, took substance, and became the tunnel he had traveled once before. Danal knew consciously that this had to be a flashback again, another hallucinatory memory that became all too real in his state of mental siege.

But then a new fear appeared, whistling through his thoughts. What if the paradox had claimed too much of him, demanded all his resources down to the last speck of energy? What if his synHeart stopped pumping, the artificial blood stopped flowing, the microprocessor did burn out and… shut down?

He did not fear the prospect of death again, but he did feel an almost crushing despair to think of all the things left to him, all the doors he had just opened up for himself, for the Wakers, for the future of Resurrection, Inc.