M. Harrison - THE CENTAURI DEVICE

It poked through the back of the surgical tent, maggot-colored, patched with distended areas of cochineal, veined blue-black. It was covered with tiny squares of white paper, each bearing a number. It opened an eye and looked at him.

'Something's gone wrong!' he shouted. 'Oh, kill it — can't you see!'

'We've had some trouble with the allografting, I admit,' said Grishkin. 'But foreign-body reaction is well below the acceptable minimum. Don't carp, Captain. Ask!'

Truck swallowed. 'Why — ' Mild, swimming blue eyes, like bird's eggs in that wreckage. It was trying to smile at him. 'Why would you need a sentient bomb?' he managed. He was frantic; anything so Grishkin would be satisfied and take him away from there.

A faint chuckle. 'You,' whispered the Grand Master of the Openers. 'You — '

Grishkin began to laugh. He threw back his head and roared. 'Oh, Captain! You've been listening to poor, violent Alice Gaw. She has a mind like a howling desert. She's mad, my son — there's no bomb on Centauri. I was there first, I dug my way into the final bunker bare-handed. What she saw lies in her own head, not there. Didn't you realize that?'

His laughter died away. He wiped his mouth. 'But I — what I saw was something quite different. It filled that place, it — ' He shuddered. Condensation formed behind his windows. Anguish clouded his eyes. 'There is a Mystery at the foot of Shaft Ten: a receptacle of the Spirit — and God spoke to me from it — ' He swayed like a sick man, pawed his forehead. 'He asked for you, Captain, he asked me to bring him a Centauran.' His lips peeled back off his teeth, he seemed to be fighting the muscles of his own face for an instant, some actual battle — then he relaxed. His fingers left a red mark on Truck's wrist 'Now, Captain, the rest of our bargain.'

'I don't think I want to go on with this.'

Truck was always running for doors. This time he made it, and he was out in the corridor before something pricked him in the neck. For someone not getting any dope, he thought, I'm passing out more than I should.

He dreamed that pupation was almost over. Doctor Grishkin was forcing him to distend the sac on his forehead, to burst the brittle shell of the chrysalis. He hated it. His multi-jointed legs, however, scrabbled on of their own accord; his forehead strained against its confines, diminished, swelled again; the shell cracked, cold air flowed in. You could go anywhere like that, said General Gaw. Anywhere, sonny. He tried to withdraw. Let me be a grub again. But they wouldn't. His antennae waved feebly, already receiving messages of a new kind. That was an end to it: fighting to remain, he left the husk nevertheless, an imago full-formed. Woke up -

Terrified in case he discovered what kind of insect he was.

He waited for his head to clear. He looked down at himself. 'I never asked for this, Grishkin. Some day I might kill you for this.' He got carefully off the bed, rubbing his arms. His old clothes were gone. Wisps of the dream were still evaporating in his head. He got dressed in the only thing available (aware of Grishkin, arms folded, watching him curiously), avoiding the mirrors in the room when he could.

He flexed his hands in miserable defiance. 'One day.' Caught an accidental glimpse of himself — shivered.

'But Captain, you wanted to disappear. Now you're invisible. Who'll look at you and see Captain John Truck, a spacer? Mm?'

Truck walked blindly past him and out of the room, but he followed. 'I've fulfilled my part of the bargain, Captain. Both your conditions have been satisfied. You're mine, now.'

His numb misery gave way to panic. He was almost sobbing. He became lost in a maze of cool white corridors, where Openers nodded politely at him and his reflection lay in ambush for him at every glass door. He began to run, his breath scraping at his throat. But he couldn't lose the shadow behind him. 'Admit it, my son — ' Finally, he found the daylight, stumbled out with Grishkin waddling rapidly after. He fell down a flight of steps and into the ghastly spaces of the Stomach badlands.

He stayed there, on his hands and knees, gulping.

'The General has installed half the Fleet over Centauri VII, Captain. It will take time to breach her security. We can only wait a suitable opportunity. In the meantime, don't you see, you can take up a probationary ministry, like any other Novice of the order. You will be invisible. It's what you asked. I have provided not only security for you, but a means whereby you can remember our bargain.'

'You didn't have to do it this way, Grishkin.'

His cloak had fallen open. He looked up. In front of him stood the pilot of the atmosphere vehicle, a puzzled expression on his decent flier's face. 'What are you staring at, you bastard?' But he could no longer avoid his reflection. It was in the man's eyes: the plum-colored cloak; the horrible naked scrawny body, shaven and goosefleshed in the wind; the bald head -

And the little plastic panel implanted in his abdominal wall. He stared at it and began to weep.

It was disgusting.

It hurt.

'Here,' said the pilot, helping him up. 'Take it easy.'

But that wasn't the end of it, either, although he soon found that he could keep the cloak discreetly wrapped round him and ignore what lay beneath it — so that when he got back to Golgotha some of his composure, such as it was, had returned. It was precarious. He'd take Pater's injunction to heart and he could no longer guess what might become of him.

It was dark by then. My Ella Speed was blacked out. She seemed deserted, but up in the control room he stumbled over Tiny Skeffern, snoring on the floor, a ripped-off bottle of Pater's ethanol under his hand. He kicked the body gently. 'Tiny? Fix, why aren't there any lights on?' He found the switches himself, worked them petulantly. 'Fix, where are you?' There was something scrawled on a bulkhead in tremulous yellow crayon:

DERE BOS

IVE GOTTA JBO ONA FRATER OUT FRUM ERTH AN IF WEER TAUKGNI ABOT

PAY WEL I HAVENT BIN PAYD FRO 6 MNUTHS

FIXX

All Chromians are dyslexic from birth. It may be why their culture is still feudal. Truck sat down in one of the command chairs and shrugged at the inscription. 'Fix, Fix.' It was no more than he deserved. He felt unutterably weary.

Tiny, meanwhile, had stirred, rubbed his eyes, and sucked the empty bottle. 'Fix left,' he said, helping himself up with the edge of the chart computer. 'Christ that stuff stinks.' He staggered round the cabin looking for water, tripping repeatedly over the bottle, intent only on his own pain. 'Took his chopper and everything.'

'It's happened before. Hell be back. We're always falling out.' It was true, but it didn't make him feel any better: it was always his fault.

Finally, Tiny got his sight back.

'Hey, Truck,' he sniggered, 'did you get converted?' He squinted across the control room, a big, silly grin spreading across his face as he took in Truck's new clothes. 'Jesus, what — '

Truck, inspired by a dreadful rage, had leaped to his feet and was making determined grabs for Tiny's throat. He skipped smartly back. 'Truck, I — '

Truck got hold of him. Laugh, and I'll kick your head in, Skeffern,' he said earnestly. 'Come on then — ' He wanted to hurt somebody. He was being driven further and further out on his own, away from even the minimal decencies of the hinterlands. He shoved Tiny up against the bulkhead until his thin blond hair was rubbing out Fix's illiterate plea for fair treatment. 'Come on' — Inviting with steely fingers — 'say one word.'

And then, from all the sick misery of his awakening in Grishkin's ghoulish city; 'Oh sod it, sod it. Help me, Tiny.'

Tiny gaped and snuffled.

Truck slumped back in his seat and set his eyes sorrowfully on the bos'n's stupid half-erased note (he wasn't fit to be out on his own: he only got into fights with people bigger than himself, or pawned his chopper). 'What am I doing, Tiny? I made a deal with Grishkin. It was the only way I could see to get hold of the bloody Device. Now I'm not sure he didn't suspect that all along. He expects me to try and doublecross him. He cut me open as a warning. What am I doing?'