Chapter Twenty-Four

HE WOKE UP IN A BLAZE OF PAIN, UNABLE TO MOVE HIS head or neck. It took several seconds to focus when he opened his eyes.

He was lying on his back on something cool and soft, looking up at a coffered ceiling painted white and gray. There was no sound he could identify, though the world around him was not completely silent; he heard a faint something that might have been wind or rain, and a rippling sound that could have been distant voices or running water.

It might have been pleasant had he not hurt so much.

Sunlight fell from somewhere, but he could not turn his head enough to see anything but ceiling and could not tell where it came from.

The pain was mostly in his neck and the back of his head, with other spots down his back and a dull grinding headache in his temples. Most of the damage felt like burns, but by no means all; he ^thought he could detect cuts, abrasions, bruises, and other injuries as well. Cautiously, he lifted his arm; that appeared normal and moved as he wanted it to. He reached up and felt the side of his head.

His hair was gone, and part of his beard; his hand touched dried blood and raw flesh, and he gasped, his vision blurring again, as. the faint pressure increased the agony beyond what he had thought possible.

He was alive, but he had no idea where; he was obviously injured, though he was not sure what had happened to him. Somebody was apparently caring for him, since he appeared to be in a bed; the coffered ceiling suggested Praunce. He wondered what had happened to the computer, why it wasn't screaming at him.

"Are you there?" he asked tentatively.

"Affirmative. Please state identity."

He winced; the mental voice seemed unbearably loud. Its question was odd; the computer had never asked him that before. He wondered how badly damaged it was. "I'm Slant, of course."

"Cyborg unit designated Slant has been terminated."

"Oh." That explained the question, and a great deal more as well. He wondered how he had survived; had the wizards had something to do with it? He thought they must have, as he could vaguely recall his struggle with the override and that magic had been in use.

If he had been terminated, then the thermite was gone and he was free. The only serious question now was whether he could take control of the computer and use the starship for himself.

"I am Slant," he told the computer. "Is there anything in your programming that says I can't communicate with you after being terminated?"

"Negative."

"Then we can just go on as before, right?"

"Negative."

"Why not?"

"Termination of cyborg unit initiates self-destruct procedure."

"It does?" He didn't really have to ask; he knew it did. That was why the computer had wanted him dead. "Then why are you still operational?"

"Programming requires that self-destruct operation be preceded by infliction of maximum possible damage to enemy installations."

He had known that, too. "Then why haven't you done your damage and shut yourself down, or blown yourself up?"

"Maximum possible damage requires use of main drive. Main drive is not presently in operation."

Slant did not have to ask any further questions. He did not want to ask any further questions.

If the ship were to blow itself up where it lay, in the gully, it would be a big, messy explosion, assuming all the various warheads went off, but would probably not hurt anyone except a few fanners who happened to be in the area. He would be stranded on the planet permanently, but relatively little harm would be done. Even the fallout wouldn't be significant when compared to the radiation level already present.

However, if the ship were to get airborne again and distribute its firepower effectively against the various cities, it could reduce the planet to a state fully as bad as it had been in three hundred years earlier. It could probably wipe out the entire civilization.

Slant had to stop that.

He felt a moment of panic as he wondered whether he could stop it, but that passed. Of course he could stop it. All he had to do was get back aboard the ship before it took off and use the release code. Even if it refused to recognize him he could get aboard; he knew all the emergency boarding procedures. Once aboard, anybody could use the release code. All he had to do was speak his name three times.

First, though, he had to get to his ship before it took off.

"How long before you can restart the drive?"

"Continued operation of photoelectric units should permit reignition within one hundred and twenty hours."

Before Slant had not worried too much about details, but he knew they could be crucially important now.

"Is that a maximum time?"

"Affirmative."

"Allowing for bad weather and so forth?"

"Affirmative."

"Then what's the minimum?"

"Twenty-one hours."

Time was suddenly rushing by; every second increased the urgency. He realized for the first time that if he was still in Praunce when the ship began its attack he would be killed along with the hundreds of thousands of innocent natives. He had traveled for seven days to reach Praunce from the ship, and though he had been moving at a leisurely pace, he doubted he could get back to the vessel in less than three days. If the weather was bright, he had only a single day.

If .the weather was cloudy, though, he might have as much as six days. An average of the two figures was three and a half days, or seventy hours. He could probably manage that if he got moving immediately. He had at least a decent chance of success, then.

There was no time to waste, however. He had to get out of bed and start moving. He would need help in getting under way; he guessed that he was probably still atop a tower, and would need a wizard to lower him to the ground. He tried to sit up, ignoring the surge of pain in his head, and shouted as he did so, calling as loudly as he could "Help! Help me!"

The near-silence vanished in a rush of footsteps and voices; a door slammed open somewhere nearby.

He managed to push himself into a sitting position on the edge of what was, as he had thought, a bed, and with some effort he brought his eyes back into focus, ignoring the drifting colored shadows that he knew were tricks of the mind and eye. He was in a room with soft gray walls and a deep golden carpet; the far end, a dozen meters away, was a single expanse of glass and lead, the panes clear or yellow or green, and smooth or rippled or bubbled. Nothing but open sky was visible beyond.

He was still in Praunce, and still atop one of the towers. He had time to see that much before his bed was surrounded b"y people. Arzadel was the first, followed by Haiger and Ahnao and others; they gathered at his bedside.

"You shouldn't be sitting up," Arzadel told him.

"I have to. I have to get to my ship as soon as possible."

"Why? What can be so urgent? You're badly injured; we got the explosive out of your head before it went off, but you were still much too close to the blast. You're severely burned from the top of your head halfway down your back, and I'm not sure we got all the fragments out.

We had to work on you for hours; it was a very delicate procedure, with all that metal and strange wiring in your head. We had to make a few changes so we could manage it, do something so you could live and heal—we don't ordinarily make changes without the subject's cooperation, but we had to."

"I know I was injured, I can feel it. The computer thinks I'm dead, though, and it has orders to take revenge for my death by destroying everything it can reach."

"The demon machine is still operating, though it believes you dead? We feared it might be."

"Oh, yes; it isn't stopped as easily as that It plans to destroy as many of your cities as it can before it kills itself."

"How can it destroy cities? It's only a single machine, isn't it?"

"It controls a starship, armed with the same kind of weapons that made that crater to the south." He saw no point in subverting his own argument by mentioning that his ship's warheads were only a tiny fraction of the size.

Arzadel sucked in his breath, then asked, "What can be done to stop it? Can you fight it?"

"If I can get aboard the ship before it has enough power to take off, I can change its orders. I think I can make it obey me."

"How long do we have before it has enough power?"

"That depends on the weather, because it's taking energy from your sun's light, but it's between one day and six. If I leave immediately and ride hard, I might get there in time."

"You can't ride in your condition. It isn't possible. We'll fly you there."

That eased his worry somewhat. He had not thought of it "Good," he said. "But I still have to hurry."

"Where is your ship?"

"In a gully a few kilometers south of Awlmei."

"Where is Awlmei?"

Slant was startled that the wizard didn't know, but answered, "It's on the plain to the west of here; I traveled for seven days, two by foot and five by horse, to get here from there."

"Due west?"

"No, slightly to the north."

"We'll find it."

Slant was not as confident as Arzadel, but he nodded. The motion hurt his neck. He was beginning to feel very unsteady, and lay back on the bed. "We have to leave as soon as possible," he said.

"We will. You rest here; I'll make the preparations and wake you when we're ready."

Slant nodded again, carefully; Arzadel turned and left

When he had gone, taking most of the others with him, Slant said to Haiger, Tm sorry I threw you around like that."

"That's all right."

"That was a good idea, claiming the tower was going to collapse. I don't know why it didn't work."

"It was Shopaur's idea, not mine."

"Thank him for me, for trying."

"I will. I was wondering . . . how do you know that your machine wants to do these terrible things?"

"It talks to me. It told me what it was planning?"

"It talks to you even when it thinks you're dead?"

"I guess it thinks I'm a ghost"

"A what?"

"Never mind." Either Slant had used the wrong word, of these people did not have ghost stories; in any case, it wasn't worth explaining. "It was told to answer my questions; nobody ever told it I had to be alive at the time."

Haiger said something else, but Slant did not hear it; he had fallen asleep.

When he awoke again the room was full of wizards. Arzadel was nearest him, and spoke.

"We're ready to go. We plan to take turns carrying you; that will be best Have you any suggestions? We know nothing of this demon you must battle."

An idea had come to him while he slept "Wizards can control the weather, can't they?"

"Sometimes."

"Could you contact the wizards in Awlmei, and ask them to to make it cloudy? That would give us more time."

In his raddled state it didn't occur to him that the wizards of Awlmei would probably take much more direct steps if they became aware of the computer's reawakening.

"The mind-talk doesn't work that well, I'm afraid; we're limited to a few kilometers at most, and Awlmei is much too far away."

"Then I have no other ideas. Let's get started."

"Right." Two wizards reached down and picked him up, trying to be gentle, but his head fell back against the pillow as one's hold slipped slightly, and he was suddenly blinded by pain.

When he could see again he was unsure how much time had passed, and whether he had remained conscious or not; the wizards were gathered around him still, but he was no longer in bed or in the gray room but on a rooftop. A strong wind blew out of the north—at least, he thought it was the north, assuming that the sun was in the southwest He was unsure why he thought it to be afternoon rather than morning; it was the feel of the air as much as anything else.

A moment later he was in midair, supported by the two wizards; the others followed, trailing slightly behind. These were not the wizards who had accompanied Arzadel to bring him the decision of the Council, but others he had not met before, for the most part He saw Arzadel among them, and one other was familiar. There was nothing he could do to help; his life and the lives of the computer's potential victims were in the hands of the wizards. He glanced at the ground far below; the city wall was passing beneath them, and the fields lay spread out ahead, the forests beyond them.

There was nothing he could do; he gave in to the pain and fell asleep again.

When he next awoke the sky was dark. He was gratified to see clouds dimly visible overhead, though there were not very many of them; the drive might take longer to restart than he feared, if those clouds lingered. He looked about and noticed that the wizards were flying at a much lower altitude. They were probably tiring, he told himself. He wished he were able to help.

Although it was hard to be certain by starlight—and his vision seemed to have blurred again, as well; he hoped that he had not suffered any permanent damage to the optic centers—he thought that the two who were carrying him were not the two who had picked him up from his bed. He looked around and could see only six wizards, where there had been eight originally. The missing two, he was fairly sure, were the pair who had first carried him; they must have tired, passed him on, and returned or landed to rest.

He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and for a moment seemed to see everything through strange polychrome distortion; the wizards were ringed in golden red, the ground below was suffused with indigo, the sky was a seething pale-blue mass. The effect faded but a curious rippling remained, as if the air were heated, though the night was cool.

The wizards holding him dipped abruptly, and he forgot about his eyesight as he grabbed instinctively for a better hold.

"You just keep still," one of the pair muttered. "Don't try and do anything; it'll only interfere. We'll get you there."

Slant nodded weakly. "How long before you restart the drive?" he asked the computer.

"Continued operation of photoelectric units should permit reignition within ninety hours."

"What's the minimum time?"

"Twelve hours."

He looked down, ignoring the distortion in his vision, and saw nothing but dark forest in every direction.

"How far do we have to go?" he asked.

"I don't know," replied one of the wizards.

That was little help; he gazed down at the forest rushing by underneath. The pain in the back of his head and neck had lessened; he could bend his neck slightly. His headache was no better, though.

A new worry occurred to him; he reached up and felt for the socket in the back of his neck.

It was still there, but bent completely out of shape; his fingers came away with soot on them. The metal was partially oxidized.

He would be unable to pilot the ship without the direct-control cable; he was stranded on this planet forever unless he could control the computer and force it to fly the ship for him.

He wouldn't be able to fly the ship at all if it destroyed itself. He had to reach it before it took off. The forest rolled away beneath; he watched it for a time, his vision finally clearing, and then dozed off again.

"Slant?"

The voice awakened him; he was still in midair, slung between two wizards, but the forest was gone; instead the ground below was open plain. It was daylight, cloudless and bright, and they were hovering, not moving forward. There was a faint hint of a heat shimmer to the landscape below, and he could not be certain if it was in the air or his vision. Remembering the trouble he had had before, including the momentary flash of weird colors, he hoped that it was not a sign of brain damage. He would have to ask the wizards to check the optic centers of his brain out very carefully, if he ever got back to Praunce.

That could wait, though; someone had awoken him. There must be a reason.

"What is it?"

"We've reached the plain, but we don't see a city or your ship anywhere. Can you direct us?" It was Arzadel who spoke.

Slant looked down and saw nothing but open prairie; behind, a few kilometers away, was the edge of the forest and the start of the hills. There were no landmarks he recognized.

"Where am I?" he asked the computer.

"Information insufficient."

"What do you mean, 'information insufficient*? I thought you always knew my location!"

"Cyborg unit has been terminated. All information received from cyborg unit must be considered invalid."

"That's ridiculous."

The computer did not reply.

"Look, tell me where I appear to be, then. I don't care if the information is invalid. Am I north or south of you?"

"Apparent location of cyborg unit is south by southwest of ship; distance unknown. Locating equipment not fully operational."

"Turn north," Slant told Arzadel. "And look for something flat and shiny black." The photoelectric cells would be far more visible than the camouflaged ship.

The wizards obeyed, turning to parallel the edge of the forest, and when they were moving again Slant asked, "How long before you start the drive?"

"Continued operation of photoelectric units should pre-mit reignition within twenty-five hours."

"What's the minimum?"

"Three hours."

"What?" For the first time, Slant noticed that the sun was in the west; he had slept away the entire morning. Furthermore, the sun was bright and warm; not a single cloud was in sight anywhere. Only four wizards were left in the party.

He did not go to sleep again, but watched as best he could the ground ahead.

Slightly over two hours later he thought the terrain was beginning to look familiar. Before he could say anything, though, one of the wizards called, "Look ahead!"

He tried; he turned his head, and the pain in his head and neck blurred his vision momentarily. When it cleared he saw a dull glint amid the grass below.

"I think that's it," he said. Relief trickled through him; he had begun to worry that he would not make it in time. The weather had been bright, clear, and sunny all day. He had wondered how the wizards could possibly have come out so far off course, and whether the computer had told him the correct direction.

Now he was no longer particularly worried. He only had to get aboard and speak his name three times.

All he had to say was his name.

He couldn't remember it, but he still had time.

"How long before you can start the drive?" he asked.

"Continued operation of photoelectric units should permit reignition within a maximum of fourteen hours.

Given current weather conditions, reignition Will occur in approximately forty-five minutes."

Slant had suspected for some time that the minimum time would prove sufficient because the weather on this continent had been consistently clear and sunny since he landed.

A few moments later the wizards landed; at Slant's suggestion they stayed well away from the ship, in case the computer had devised, a way to defend itself. He would approach alone, on foot. This was to be entirely his own battle.

"Be careful, Slant," Arzadel said as he staggered to his feet.

"I will," he answered. He was unsteady for a moment; he had not stood upright on his own for more than a day, and his body's reserves had undoubtedly been depleted by healing the wounds on his head and neck, whatever the wizards might have done to help. He realized he hadn't eaten since before the thermite bomb went off; he had not had the time. His body had suppressed his hunger automatically, as it was trained to do. Perhaps that was why his vision had been so faulty, and not improved since first he awoke after the blast. Even now, he seemed to see a bluish shimmer to the ground before him. He blinked, and it was gone.

As he walked slowly toward his vessel it occurred to him that he might be able to stop the ship from taking off by smashing the photoelectric panels, but he decided against trying it The computer probably had some way of defending them, and if he was unable to get at them, for whatever reason,- he might waste too much time in the attempt. The release code was a sure thing. Even if he could not remember his name, he knew it was written on a slip of paper stuck in a book in the case in the control cabin.

He would do better to get aboard the ship quickly than to waste time with the photoelectric equipment.

Besides, if he wrecked the panels, he might never get the ship off the ground once he had taken control.

He arrived at the lip of the gully, on the far side from the ship. Carefully, he .began climbing down the slope.

His feet went out from under him on the loose sand, and he slid feet-first down the side of the depression; the spray of dust raised by his body stung painfully on his burns. He lay still for a moment at the bottom, then slowly sat up. He hand, when he raised it to shield his eyes from the slanting sunlight, shook from fatigue and hunger. j

He was twenty meters from the ship; it loomed up before him, an irregular mass of green plastic camouflage covering most of the opposite slope of the gully for meters in either direction. The airlock, he knew, was around the far side, above the whig. There were other entrances, but that was the one that was most easily breached.

It was possible he wouldn't have to breach anything. "Open the aft emergency hatch," he told the computer.

"Cyborg unit has been terminated. Commands given on this channel are therefore invalid.''

He had expected that. "How long until reignition?"

"Approximately thirty-two minutes."

That was not bad, though he was cutting it closer than he liked. He made his way across the gully and up the far side in eight minutes, staying well clear of the camouflage cover in case the computer decided he was dangerous. The stream at the bottom helped cool him and wash the dust away, and he paused while wading across to drink a few handfuls of water.

Once he was above the camouflage he approached slowly and cautiously, taking his time in finding his way through the plastic and along the wing in the cool green darkness.

The computer did nothing to stop him and said nothing; he judged he had slightly under twenty minutes remaining.

The airlock door did not cooperate; the manual control was being overridden by the computer, and the computer ignored his commands to open.

"Can you hear me?" he asked aloud.

"Negative," the computer replied through his communication circuit. "Exterior audio inoperative for reasons • of power conservation."

There was still a way in; the manual control that the computer had overridden operated the same hydraulic mechanism the computer itself used, but he could use an emergency panel just aft of the hatch to uncouple the mechanism, allowing the door to be cranked open by hand, just as he had cranked it shut when he left the ship. He found the panel and pried it open, breaking a fingernail on the metal.

The coupling lever inside was stiff from long disuse; it took all his strength to throw it. When it finally came free he was unable to stop his forward momentum, and sprawled awkwardly on the ship's wing.

He lay there for a few seconds, then got to his feet, his ears ringing. Ghost images danced before him, and the metal sides of the ship had a golden sheen. The airlock was still closed. The computer told him, when he asked, that he had fourteen minutes.

It took one of the fourteen minutes to work the hatch open far enough for him to slip inside. He left it as it was; he had no time to waste in recoupling the hydraulics or cranking it shut.

The inner door was also shut; he cursed his own caution. There was no need to find an uncoupler for this door; the regular manual mechanism could not be overridden. He had it open in thirty seconds.

There was an unspeakably foul odor filling the interior of the ship; he gagged when it first reached him, and stopped where he was. It was nothing familiar, no simple failure of the ship's ventilation as had sometimes occurred over the years. It was the smell of something dead and rotting.

The air within was stagnant; the ship's ventilators had not been running. The computer had been conserving power. "Turn on the fans," he ordered aloud. "Clear that smell out of here."

There was a soft whirr as the computer obeyed. It was programmed to obey certain orders from anyone inside its hull, so that time would not be wasted on authorization during emergencies; any request for essential life-support systems, such as air circulation, would be fulfilled.

The stink subsided gradually, and Slant realized what it was. He had left Kurao's head on the acceleration couch in the control cabin.

That was a minor consideration, however. He was aboard ship, with perhaps ten minutes remaining before the drive could be restarted. All he had to do was speak the release code.

He couldn't remember his name. It began with 'something that sounded a little like his code name—Slan?

Slam? Sant?

None of those sounded right.

"Computer, what's your cyborg unit's civilian name?"

"That information is restricted."

He had spoken aloud to avoid argument about his termination, so the computer had replied over the ship's speakers; its voice was strange and unfamiliar, very unlike the "voice" that he heard over the communication device in his skull. It had a pleasant contralto, though it spoke in a monotone. He had not expected it to have a feminine voice.

It might be willing to answer its cyborg; he tried sub-vocalizing. "What's my civilian name?"

"That information is restricted, available only to personnel authorized by the Command. Cyborg unit does not have authorization."

He was not worried yet; he still had time. The drive would not be started for a few more minutes, and it would take time to heat up the engines. Once aloft, it could take time to choose and approach a target.

His name began with an S sound, he was sure. It was a two-part name.

He couldn't think of it.

"How long until ignition?"

"Approximately seven minutes."

He would have to find that slip of paper in the bookcase. He could not remember the name. He stepped through the inner door of the airlock and moved cautiously down the corridor to the control cabin. The lights were on, dimly, as if during Slant's sleep period.

The smell of rotting flesh was not completely gone here; it made him want to turn back, to find somewhere to vomit. He forced himself to keep moving forward.

The storage lockers were still open, as he had left them; he was surprised that the computer had not closed them. It was apparently serious about using the minimum power required by its programming. He was glad that it was required to keep open the communication channel he used, or else he might not have know what it was doing in time to stop it.

The chameleon fur was a neutral gray color; apparently the computer was not able to keep power from revitalizing it. He had no time to play with it; even though the gray was ugly, he ignored it.

Kurao's head was a mass of decay, lying on the canvas sack he had carried it in; the idea of having it in the room while he searched through the books was more than he could stand, and he carried it to one of the disposal chutes.

If he had had more time he might have done something slightly more respectful, but he had six minutes.

He returned to the control cabin and crossed directly to the bookcase. The smell was already fading. He opened the glass doors and pulled out a handful of old paperbacks.

The acceleration couch had an unpleasant stain where Kurao's head had rested; it had seeped around the edge of the plastic dropcloth. He did not want to touch it. Instead, he seated himself on the floor beneath the bookcase and began thumbing through books.

Almost immediately, he found a slip of paper; he unfolded it and read, "#7 locker has broken latch, open with screwdriver."

He threw the paper and book aside, and picked up the next volume.

The note with his name on it was not in any of the first dozen books; he paused and looked up at the shelves. They were jammed full. Those dozen books had not made a visible dent.

It would take half an hour, at least, to go through the entire bookcase, even if he gave each volume only a quick riffle—and the note might be wedged in where a quick riffle would not find it.

"How long until you start the drive?"

"Approximately four minutes, thirty seconds."

He had to remember, and quickly. If he could not remember his name, he had to remember where he had put the note.

"Computer, do you know which book has my name in it?"

"Negative."

He had expected that; the computer's memory was not unlimited, and it couldn't keep records of everything he did. There was nothing to do but keep looking; he pulled down a fat book on late-nineteenth-century art.

When the warning chime sounded, he sat amid a pile of books he had thumbed through; he had found half a dozen notes, mostly reminding himself of particularly good features in the computer's video library.

"What is it?"

"Main drive has been reignited. Prepare for launch."

There was a sudden series of banging sounds as the computer used its now-plentiful power supply to take care of its postponed maintenance and close the doors to the storage lockers. The lights came up to full brilliance; Slant blinked. Each light appeared haloed in red; he blinked again, and they were normal.

He had to get onto the acceleration couch, he knew, but he didn't want to leave the bookcase, or to touch that dark-brown stain. He tried to think of his name.

The pain in his head distracted him. It was no use trying.

He got to his feet and grabbed another handful of paperbacks from the bookcase, then started toward the couch. He was reaching out toward it when he heard the engines starting. He wasted no more time but threw himself onto the couch, turning as he did to try and get into the proper position. He almost made it.

The ship's takeoff vaporized the green plastic camouflage; the nose shredded the cover into thousands of fluttering shreds that vanished completely when the heat of the exhaust hit them. The side of the gully collapsed as the ship tore free.

The photoelectric panels were shattered and partially melted by the shock and heat, but they remained where they were, glinting dully in the sun.

To the south, four wizards from Praunce watched wordlessly, certain that Slant had failed and that their doom was upon them. To the north, a few Awlmeian fanners saw the launch and wondered what it could be.

Aboard ship, Slant was slammed back against the couch. He was not properly aligned with the depression in the couch designed to fit his body, so although the machinery performed its function, thrusting upward against him to counteract the acceleration, his head and arm were banged against the edge. Red waves of staggering pain poured through him from the blow to his injured head.

His body was equipped to handle pain, he told himself.

There was a pounding and bumping all around him; he managed to pry his eyes open against the pressure of acceleration, and saw through blurred vision that most of the bookcase was empty. He had left it open, and the books had fallen out, tumbling past him to collect at the back of the cabin.

The acceleration suddenly subsided; the couch shifted under him, adjusting to new acceleration, and he realized the ship was turning. It was preparing for its first attack run.

"Stop it! Damn it! I know our release code!"

"Release code can be accepted over onboard audio."

"It's my name!"

The computer said nothing. Slant reached for the direct-control cable but then remembered that he couldn't use it.

"My name, damn it, repeated three times!"

He knew what it was; he twisted his neck, ignoring the pain, and glanced at the pile of books, tumbled haphazardly against the curving wall. He did know what it was; he only had to remember it. Slat . . .

Satta . . . San ...

"Sam!" His name was Sam, he could remember hearing it many times; a girl had whispered it in his ear, his father had called him that. Samuel.

"My name's Samuel Turner!"

That was it!

The computer said nothing.

He remembered that he had to repeat it three times.

"Samuel Turner, Samuel Turner, Samuel Turner!" he shouted. "I'm Samuel Turner!"

The computer clicked and whirred, and answered, "Affirmative. Release code accepted. Awaiting orders."

He barely heard it; his mind felt as if it were tearing itself apart and being rammed back together. He felt himself to be eighteen people, each distinct, all jammed into a single body and being forced to merge with each other.

The pilot was gone, and Slant himself realized he knew astronomy and navigation; cover personalities were fading into nothingness, leaving him their skills and memories. He remembered his seduction of Ahnao—or her seduction of him, whichever it had been—and knew why he had made each move, what each of the proper responses had been. The memories of the warrior persona mingled with his own as it faded, last of all, and he was revolted by the knowledge that he had killed and maimed with his own hands—though he had had the ability to do worse, and would still have it, if he survived; he could mangle other human beings in ways he found hard to believe. He had been aware that he had done these things, or that they had been done with his body, but now he felt them himself, knew what bones breaking under his hands felt like.

He did not want to know everything he had done and thought in all his guises, but as he reabsorbed each schizoid personality that knowledge ran through him and into his own memories, leaving no distinction between himself and the person who had done it.

It had been he, Samuel Turner, who had decapitated an innocent old man and dissected his brain; it had been he who killed Teyzhan guards with his bare hands, he who cut off a beggar's hand, he who seduced a foolish young woman, he who had made sense of a synesthetic mess of data in order to steer the ship, he who had spent fourteen years wandering in space killing any who interfered with him. He knew how he had done all these things, and he remembered committing each act.

Then the memories were blanked out by a wall of pain. The back of his head was a mass of raw flesh and exposed nerves, and the mechanisms that kept him in control of the pain from those wounds had just shut down.

He struggled to reconstruct them, to somehow block out the agony; his vision was bathed in red haze. He was unsure he could remain conscious much longer, and he had to stop the computer from destroying the planet's civilization. "Don't attack!" he called feebly. "Stop!"

"Affirmative. Cessation of all computer activity in five seconds."

"What? He remembered the computer's death wish, and that one of the ways it could die was a shut-down order following its release code; it was misinterpreting his command. It would shut itself off if he didn't countermand himself in the five-second grace period, and without the computer he could not control the ship. It would crash, or drift off into space if it had reached escape velocity, or possibly fall into orbit around the planet. He would die.

No! He would not let himself die! Not after surviving fourteen years of drifting through space, fourteen years in which he had killed dozens, hundreds of innocent people so that he could survive. After living through all that, he would not die now because the computer chose to suicide; he would not let the machine take him with it. He would not give in to it this final time.

He struggled against the pain, trying to phrase a command; his communication circuit was dead, so it would have to be spoken aloud. He sat up, so that the computer would hear him more clearly.

That proved a disastrous mistake; a new wave of pain swept over him as he moved, and he blacked out for an instant.

That was enough. There was a click, and the computer was gone. The ship was dead, running entirely on its simple fail-safe systems, coasting along its set course.

He could not restart the computer; he had absorbed the personality in charge of ship's maintenance, and he knew that it was gone, that it could only be revived by slow, step-by-step reprogramming. If he was to survive he would have to land the ship himself—or else boost it clear of the planet, to drift on until the life-support systems failed. That wouldn't take long, without the computer to regulate them, and he didn't want to die, alone in the void, when food or air or water slowly gave out.

He had to land the ship, any way he could. Any landing he could survive would do; keeping the ship intact was of relatively little importance.

There were no manual controls; the ship had been designed for the use of a cyborg and computer. It had intentionally been made so that it was impossible for an ordinary human to pilot, to prevent capture and use by the enemy. The closest he could come would be to rip out the control leads to the engines and short-circuit them into jury-rigged switches.

He didn't have time for that He didn't have time for anything at all, without the computer or the direct-control cable. The ship might crash at any time; he had no idea what its trajectory was. He wished he could see where he was.

The cabin seemed to flicker around him in a reddish haze; his eyes were playing tricks again.

Perhaps the socket in his neck was not beyond hope, he thought He snatched up the direct-control cable and tried to shove it into place.

It wouldn't fit He felt an eerie whining sensation as a put contact brushed against the side of the socket, where insulation had burned off and left bare metal; that was not where the contact was intended to go, but a signal of some sort was coming through.

That was something. He pushed the cable in harder, trying to ignore what that did to the raw tissue of his neck; there was a faint scrape of metal on bone as he drove the socket up against his spine.

There seemed to be some sensation, a faint electric tingle. He strained to feel the contact, to tap into the ship's sensors and see the data he needed.

He could sense, vaguely, that something was coming through; he closed his eyes. The cabin did not vanish; an after-image, etched in vivid spectral colors, lingered and seemed to brighten. He did not want that; he wanted contact with the ship's sensors. He concentrated, and the image of the cabin distorted, shrank, and vanished, and he saw where he was.

The ship was traveling a long, shallow curve; it had already passed over Awlmei, its first target, without strafing, and was sailing eastward across the forested hills. It would crash somewhere northwest of Praunce. He took that in in a single quick glimpse, then lost contact again.

Something was wrong, though; the information had not been in the right form. He had seen it, rather than having to interpret coded data; it was as if the ship had suddenly turned transparent around him. His skin was tingling strangely, most particularly on his forehead and the backs of his hands.

Could it have something to do with his use of the release code? Did he see things differently now, because Samuel Turner rather than the pilot was seeing them?

He had no time to consider such things. He had to get the ship down in one piece—or at least, in few enough pieces to ensure his survival.

Nothing was wrong with his present course, but the speed was too great; the ship would be splattered over several square kilometers. What the computer had considered a slow strafing speed was still more than a thousand meters a second. If he braked and did nothing else, though, the ship would drop steeply, and again he would have no chance of survival. He had to slow the ship and bring its nose up simultaneously and gradually, and drop it down to a belly landing, using the trees to cushion the impact.

He had to manage somehow. He thought his orders into the cable, or tried to; nothing happened.

He concentrated, eyes tight shut, his right fist clenched around the plug, his left hand clamped on the edge of the acceleration couch. His head ached, and his scalp tingled; he wondered if current were seeping into his skin from a faulty contact.

Suddenly he made a connection again and saw the ground below, coming up at him; he tried to order the ship to brake.

There was a response; the ship veered suddenly as one braking jet fired. He had "to correct that, he knew, or he could wind up in a spin; he shoved harder at the plug.

That motion, combined with the sudden sideways acceleration from his uneven braking, bent several contacts and snapped a piece from the edge of the socket, sending his right hand, still holding the plug, scraping across the side of his neck. His skin crawled, pain surged through him, and he almost screamed; he had to hold the image of the ground, to keep control of the ship! If he lost it now he was dead.

He did keep it; the other braking jets fired, and he watched as the ship leveled off, then slowed and began to drop smoothly toward the woods beneath.

The plug, though, was nowhere near the socket. His skin felt as if it was rippling across his body, and his hair seemed to be standing on end, as if his body were charged with electricity.

He opened his eyes and brought the plug around to where he could see it It was ruined, its contacts bent or broken, yet he was in control of the ship through it. He saw it clearly, and at the same time saw an intricate web of red and yellow light woven through it; his image of the. approaching ground was also in that light, somehow, and the meads of controlling the ship as well. It was wizardry of some kind, he was sure.

He had no time to wonder what was happening; he had to land the ship. He saw the trees coming up, corrected the ship's angle, corrected again, braked—and hit.

It was a bad landing, a very bad landing; Slant could hear and feel the ship coming apart around him in roaring, splintering fragments as it smashed its way through the trees. He knew, though, that he shouldn't have been able to land at all. The only thing that had enabled him to was magic.

That was his last conscious thought before the ship hit the ground.