John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

Not that extraction would show much. But then, perhaps Rolff had done well: an experienced extracting tech might realize that Hayes had had his brain rearranged by an extractor before. Conclusions could be drawn from that. Yes, Rolff had good instincts.

“And you,” Ben was saying, looking at Watson. “Hayes was sent over by your people.”

A shame Johnston had been there. That had confused Hayes’s cerebral reprogramming. He’d been programmed to shoot Crandall and the man standing with Crandall, which should have been Ben. But Johnston had been there with Ben… so Ben was alive and might be suspicious.

To kill him, though, pretend he’d been killed at the same time as the others. That would alert Sackville-West. “This came in just ten minutes ago,” Watson said. And in saying it committed himself to letting Ben live. He handed Ben a satelex. It read:

Arrest Special BG Hayes instantly. Repeat: Arrest and hold now for extraction team. The following is text of Hayes’s letter to newspaper International Herald Tribune … “I have decided to terminate the life of Rick Crandall, a pious hypocrite whose distortions of God’s Teachings are an embarrassment to all real Christians. St. Peter has come to me in a dream and asked me to do this, and I want the world to know why I’m doing it. By the time you get this, I will be a part of history. I will have killed the Antichrist.”

“So that was it!” Ben said. “He was crazy!” A little relieved, for some reason. “But why couldn’t this have come just a little earlier… It isn’t fair…”

Watson nodded with a believable look of sympathy, thinking: The ground had been prepared; false background on Hayes, which Sackville-West would be allowed to unearth, made it look as if Hayes had converted to “Christ’s Army” fanatics, the Christian equivalent of Muslim militant fundamentalists, dead set against Crandall. “He’d decided that Crandall was the Antichrist.”

Ben put his face in his hands. Rolff and Klaus looked at each other; Klaus rolled his eyes. Rolff smiled.

“Rick was important to you, wasn’t he, Ben,” Watson said.

Ben nodded into his hands.

“He was important to all of us,” Watson said. “He was the heart and soul of the Second Alliance and its Church. We can’t let him die. Our people, our movement… all of us, we need him too badly.”

Ben, red-eyed, looked up at him. “You can’t revive him. His head…”

“We can revive… what he symbolized. And we can revive Crandall as a symbol. Not as a martyr. Not yet. In time. But for now, we need Crandall himself. Or… an image of him. We’ll computer-animate him. A generated image of him will go out on the channels, will continue giving orders, lectures, insights. Just as he would. We’ll be… arranging it.”

Ben shook his head in disbelief. “That’s… it’s not respectful!”

Watson went to sit on the coffee table directly in front of Ben, so close that their knees were touching. He looked into Ben’s eyes and said with all his earnestness, “It’s what Rick would have wanted. He would want whatever’s best for the Church. He was the glue that held it together. We have a world to make, Ben. A sacred war to fight. We need him for the morale of that war’s soldiers. Do you understand?”

After a moment Ben swallowed and nodded.

The Colony’s survival mechanism was operated from right here. This was the Colony’s autonomic breathing apparatus, its bodily thermostat, its immune system. And at the top of the spine that made the system work was a brain. It had been an electronic brain; it was now an uneasy collaboration between electronic and biological brains. Rimpler. His brain, his pared-back mind, crouching in the center of that webwork of wiring like a spider of gray matter.

Since the system was of priority importance to the survival of the Colony, it was multiply protected. It was equipped with an air lock to give it a buffer should meteor damage—or a missile—evacuate the air in the surrounding sections and out into space. It had its own temperature control units, special layers of insulation. And there were protections against sabotage…

Russ could feel Rimpler watching him.

The security cam near the ceiling was whirring. Refocusing on Russ and Stedder as they entered the air lock between the access corridor and the Life Support Systems Primary Computer housing. Then the camera tracked down to look at the plastiseal box Russ carried. Did Rimpler know what was in the box? Did he guess that it was his electronic replacement?

Stedder wore an electrician’s yellow-paper jumpsuit, freshly printed out so that it rustled as he moved, and he carried a stainless-steel briefcase of tools and testers; he was a darkeyed, compact, muscular, deeply tanned German mechanic and elec-tech who was also the Colony’s low-grav wrestling champion. Most of his free time he spent training or soaking up solar radiation in the sun rooms. He was said to be gay. He had an air of perpetual boredom whenever he was at work, as if he were only putting up with this sort of thing until his shot at the Olympics came around.

He went into the air lock first, Russ right behind him. It was a rectangular room with a door on each end; the room was about the size of a walk-in closet, military green on the metal walls, ceiling, floor. Near the ceiling, to one side of the camera, was a ventilation grate. It made Russ think uncomfortably of the gas chamber he’d seen once when he’d done consultancy work.

The first door closed behind them with a hiss, and its locking wheel spun. Clack: locked shut.

Some of Stedder’s air of boredom vanished as he turned to look at the door.

“It does that automatically,” Russ told him. And there were two SA bulls on the other side who could open it from there for them, if necessary.

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” Stedder said. “I was just startled by the noise.” He turned to face the door into the Primary Computer housing, frowned, studying it. “You couldn’t get in?”

“We tried the lock about twenty times. It just won’t accept the combination. Rimpler’s over-ridden the…” He broke off as Stedder looked at him, eyebrows lofted at the name Rimpler. Stedder didn’t know about Rimpler’s brain; the interface.

“It’s too hard to explain,” Russ said. “The main thing is—can you get us in?”

“I don’t know till I try.” Stedder examined the seals on the double-thick air-lock door. He pointed to a panel in the base of the door. It was bolted shut, the bolts the smooth kind that could only be removed from this side by force. “I could drill out those bolts, open the panel, try to trigger the door from inside.”

Russ nodded, and Stedder opened his case, squatted down to work.

Russ glanced down at the blue plastic box under his arm, then up at the camera. Wondering if Rimpler knew. Rimpler could monitor the whole Colony from here; might know that the New-Soviets had let them bring in another subsistence shipment. He might have listened in on the shipping clerk’s report on the cargo.

Stedder’s drills whined; tiny, spiral worms of metal sifted into small heaps on the floor beneath, and Russ thought, I’m thinking of that thing in there as Rimpler. But is it Rimpler? It’s a portion of his brain, conceivably a portion of his consciousness. It seemed they’d cut out everything but cunning, hatred, and a sense of humor so reduced, it was imbecilic. It seemed to have some memories. It had motivation, initiative. Is that enough to make it someone? Is it Rimpler?

But what am I anymore? Used to be sure of myself, of what I was, what I believed in, who I believed in. Not now.