Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

He became conscious of Com’peer moving around, humming. When the surgeon leaned over to peer into his eyes, he yelped involuntarily; there was a mutant iguana staring at him. His vision squirmed for a moment, then refocused to reveal the Narseil’s face.

“Good,” said the surgeon.

Legroeder struggled to make his mouth work. “Wha’ d’y’ mean, good? ” he managed. “You scared… living b’jesus… out ’me.”

The Narseil laughed, the sound of a zipper going up. “I was applying a small input to your vision system to see if you would react. I was not disappointed.”

Legroeder closed his eyes, praying it would all go away.

“Don’t worry if all this seems a bit disconcerting,” Com’peer went on. “We’ll have you trained before you actually go into action.”

“How’re you—?” Legroeder started to say, but before he could complete the thought, a new rush of inputs came over him. He was suddenly swimming in a surrealistic landscape, floating over glowing orange lava beneath a blood-red sky. He felt a rush of fear, and then annoyance and confusion. Finally it occurred to him that perhaps he could control this the way he would control a rigger-net. He tried to wish the volcanic landscape away. When that didn’t help, he tried to command it away. There was still no effect, except that the lava seemed to glow hotter, rising toward him with its sulfurous fumes. With a silent mutter, he focused his thoughts more sharply. In his mind’s eye, he formed his right hand into a painter’s brush. He stroked at the sky. The blood-red softened to pink, and then to a pale violet. Ahh … With a sweep of his brush, he erased the lava and turned the surroundings into a cool blue place with a ceiling over his head… and finally back into the Narseil medical center.

He glared up at the Narseil surgeon.

“Very good,” said Com’peer. “You seem to have a knack for this. Of course, as a rigger, you should.”

“As a rigger,” Legroeder growled, “I don’t like having my mind messed with. If I don’t know where input is coming from, and I can’t control it, I can’t rig. That’s why I didn’t want these damn things!”

“I understand,” said the surgeon, in a tone of sandpaper, probably meant to be soothing. “That’s why we’re training you—so you will be in control. You’re off to a good start. I expected it to take you far longer to pull out of that image just now. My congratulations.”

Legroeder swore under his breath. “You might have given me some warning.”

Her laugh sounded like crinkling cellophane. “Next time. Next time we will give you warning. Now, would you like to rest before we move on to phase two?”

Legroeder rolled his head on the padded table. “Phase two? Phase two? Yes, I would like to rest! Can I get off this damned table?”

The surgeon helped Legroeder sit up. “You are feeling well enough to walk? Good! Then my associates will take you to your room and get you something to eat before you sleep. Try to make yourself at home and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Legroeder wobbled as he slipped off the table onto rubbery legs. “Thank you.”

The surgeon acknowledged with a nod, then motioned to one of the medical assistants to come forward. “Now, do not be surprised if you find yourself… interacting… with your new implants as you sleep. It is nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Legroeder asked suspiciously.

“You may have dreams.”

Sleep proved hard to come by, and when he did drop off, Legroeder found himself on a roller coaster of night visions. His inner world flickered with images and movement; he ran in his dreams, trying to find his way down a maze of corridors, trying to escape from he knew not what, or to catch up with something very much like it. His breath became ragged; his pulse raced.

He woke up, alone, in a small room. He was lying on a pad on the floor. The Narseil had worried that he might fall off one of their high beds, and his tangled bedclothes suggested that they were right. He sat up, dazed, trying to bring back the confusing welter of dream images that had preceded his awakening. He felt a need to identify them before he could push them aside—to clear his mind of them before he could trust his senses in the waking world.

A Narseil aide appeared, calling him to breakfast. Already? It felt like the middle of the night. He dressed and followed the aide to a nearby room, where he sat alone and ate cereal with rice milk, and drank something like coffee. Finally he was taken back to the medical center. Com’peer greeted him cheerily, asked how he’d slept, and led him to a console. “Please study,” she said.

On the display were six faces. The first snapped to full screen as he sat down. It was his own face: dark, olive-tinted skin in a narrow, slightly pinched face. All right—he knew what he looked like. He could stand to be a little handsomer, but he’d lived with this face for a long time, and figured he could keep on living with it. The screen flicked to the second face, and it was… his face, but different. It was longer and thinner, almost more like a Narseil. His features were recognizable, but only because he was looking for them. It was a very good disguise. It was also a remake of his entire facial structure. “Just how would you do this—by putting my head in a vice?” he asked, looking up at Com’peer.

“Nothing so crude,” said the surgeon. “But in a sense you are right. We would have to redo the bone structure of your face. It would involve some pulverizing and reconstituting.”

“ Jesus ,” Legroeder said, feeling faint. “What else have you got?”

The next image was just the opposite effect: it looked as if an anvil had been dropped on his head. The face was recognizably human, but barely. “Oh, that’s great,” he said. “Christ Almighty.”

“All right, no need to worry,” said Com’peer, beginning to sound just a little tense. “We’ll keep showing you possibilities.”

“I can just imagine! Christ! ”

Com’peer was quiet for a moment. “Could I ask you a personal favor? Could you not curse in those terms, please?”

“What?” He looked up at her, startled.

The Narseil’s voice changed in tone. “I am a Christian,” she said, “and it troubles me to hear His name used in that manner.”

Legroeder stared, open-mouthed. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I am not.” The Narseil looked at him oddly. “Why would I kid?”

“You’re a Christian? I thought you Narseil were all Three Ringers.”

Com’peer’s neck-sail quivered a little. “The Three Rings is the predominant faith on my world. But not the only one, no. Forgive me for the digression. About these images—”

“I’ll be damn—I mean—”

“It is all right. Now, if you will look at the images again… I think you worry too much about these changes. If you do not want us to alter your fundamental bone structure, we will not. There is much that we can do, short of that.”

Legroeder shifted his gaze from the surgeon to the screen. The next image looked like a face that had stood in the path of a desert sandstorm. The features were scoured and smoothed, the eyebrows almost entirely missing, the angularities of his nose and cheekbones rounded and softened. It seemed almost feminine.

“Next!” he grunted.

The next was a lot more like his real face, except that at first he scarcely saw it, because his hair was so drastically altered. It cascaded out in a thick, overhanging umbrella, and was cut sharply inward at the bottom, in a downward angle to his head. The eyes were changed, too—dulled from the dark intensity that he normally saw in the mirror. “ Ug-g- ly,” he grunted. “But better than any of the others, that’s for sure.”