Chapter Six

 

Kole spent most of the next day sleeping off a hangover. Sabre also rested in his cabin, and Tassin longed to spend time with him, but now was too embarrassed to face him. She lay on her bed and stared at the dimpled plastic ceiling, remembering the previous evening. What must he think of her? She had not tried to hide her feelings from him, but he seemed oblivious to them. Now he must think the worst of her intentions, and there was so much more to it than that. Without his memories, however, he had no way of knowing that, and Kole had blundered into a delicate situation, ruining it. She cursed him and rolled onto her side, trying to sleep to escape her thoughts.

At dusk they left the ship, Sabre clad in his new clothes. Tassin avoided looking at him, and Kole nursed a sore head and belly from the fight. They entered the gaming room and searched the dark corners for Shasen, finding him in the same place. He eyed Kole with deep suspicion, but relaxed when she introduced him and sat down.

Tassin leant close to say, "We've decided to help you, in return for your help with the memory problem."

"Great! When can we get together, and who's got the amnesia, him?" He nodded at Kole.

"No. We can do it whenever you can."

"How about now?"

"That would be wonderful. Do you have a room here?"

He shook his head. "We can go to the lab. I have all the passkeys and codes; I often work late. No one else will be there now."

"Fine."

Shasen rose, and Tassin studied him when he stepped into the light. Close-cropped dark brown hair topped a high-browed, intelligent face with a receding hairline and bright green eyes. His nose had been broken at some stage, and three scars ran down one cheek, ending at the side of his mouth. He turned away and led them out of the gaming room. Kole suggested that they take his air-car, and they went to the parking area. The flight to the lab was short, since it was housed in a squat white building not far from the club. This was clearly the reason the gaming room was Shasen’s hang out. Kole landed the air-car on the roof and they entered through a lift that carried them down several floors. Soon they tramped through a harshly lighted, gleaming white corridor with doors leading off it at regular, widely spaced intervals. Sabre looked uneasy, and she wondered why.

Shasen opened three security doors with a card and a code, preceding them into a sizeable white room with more of the same harsh lights in the ceiling, cluttered with an assortment of strange paraphernalia. It had a sterile smell, and a wide table with several workstations on it ran all around the walls. Data wands stood in containers beside each station, along with clipboards and racks of vials. Other tables in the centre of the room held a variety of devices whose purpose she could not divine, square boxes with holes in them and others with buttons on them. Some glass boxes contained small animals, and a padded reclining chair stood in one corner, cables festooning it from an overhead arm. A black screen on a jointed arm hung over it, connected to what looked like a helmet with bunches of wires protruding from it, which were attached to a box at the base of the screen’s support. Sabre eyed the equipment as Shasen turned to her.

"May I ask a few questions before we get started on the amnesia? Who has it, anyway?"

Tassin nodded at Sabre. "He does. Ask him, then."

Shasen turned to the cyber. "What interface is used between the control unit and the host brain?"

"Barrinium sheathed resling implants with psychotropic enhancers and virtual memory input nodes."

Shasen's brows rose. "Wow. You don't sound like you've got amnesia."

"It's selective. My older memories are intact."

"What you just told me is highly classified information. If it's correct, how the hell do you know it?"

Sabre looked away. "I'm from Myon Two."

"A technician?"

"No."

"Okay. Can the host access his memories?"

"Yes."

Shasen looked excited. "What brain capacity does the host possess?"

"A genetically enhanced, but otherwise normal brain with an IQ of a hundred and eighty-four."

"With normal function?"

"Yes." Sabre hesitated, a slight frown tugging at his brows. "No. Not under cyber control."

"But if it was released...?"

"Then yes."

"So the host is unaware?"

"No."

Shasen nodded and turned to a computer, typing on the keyboard. "As I suspected. This is great stuff. Does the host feel pain under cyber control?"

"Yes."

"Does he know what happens to him?"

"Yes."

"Are all his senses intact?"

Sabre cast Tassin a rueful look. "They all work, but some not very well."

"So pain is dulled?"

"No."

Shasen typed on the keyboard. "Could you elaborate?"

"He can't focus his eyes, but he can see blurred images. He can hear pretty well, and pain is not dulled at all."

"And he has absolutely no control over any part or function of his body."

"Yes."

Shasen turned to face him. "That's remarkable. I thought only a technician would know that stuff. Okay, that will do for now. Let's start on the amnesia. When did it start, and what sort of electric shocks caused it? Were they applied directly to the skull?"

"Technicians don't know what I just told you." Sabre leant on a table.

"Then how do you know?"

Tassin said, "Let's concentrate on the amnesia. I think you'll find the answers when you ask more questions about that."

"Okay." Shasen looked puzzled. "So how did it happen?"

Sabre looked away, his expression unreadable.

Tassin murmured, "It's okay." She untied the cloth that hid the cyber band and pulled it off. "The shocks were applied directly to his brain, and they were caused by that."

Shasen eyed the band and sighed. "It's a remarkably good imitation, but really, this isn't something I find amusing."

"It's not a joke. Have a good look at it."

Shasen walked over to Sabre and peered at the band. "The flashing lights are great, very realistic. Plastic? Black crystals and aluminium?"

"No. Lorasium cobalt and barrinium," Sabre said.

"That's..." Shasen touched the brow band, then tugged at it. His eyes widened, and he recoiled. "Bloody hell!"

Kole chuckled. "That's what I said."

Shasen stumbled back into the chair rigged with cables, gasping in shock. "You... you're..."

"A cyber-bio combat unit, grade A," Sabre said.

Shasen groped for the seat and sank down on it, his face chalk white. "You're a cyber. A free cyber."

"Yes. I was born from an artificial womb on Myon Two. I was fitted with the cyber at one year old and spent... a long time in a sensory deprivation tank. I was trained in every conceivable combat art and force taught all the skills to operate every weapon or ship. I've spent twenty-seven years as a prisoner in my mind."

Shasen gaped at him, and Kole cocked a brow. "A hundred and eighty-four IQ, hey? That's almost genius, pal."

Sabre glanced at him. "The cyber needed a good tool."

"This is incredible," Shasen gasped. "Impossible, too. How did it happen?"

"The cyber band is damaged," Tassin said.

"The control circuit," Sabre added.

"Can you help him?"

Shasen closed his mouth and swallowed. "Yes, sure. Why did the cyber shock you?"

"It was trying to force me into submission."

"But you got free. So others could be freed."

Sabre shook his head. "Not unless their bands were broken exactly as mine was, and that was a fluke."

"But you're living proof of my theory. Cyber hosts are capable of cognitive thought."

"Yes, we are. We're just not allowed to think."

"My god... That must be hell." Shasen stared at Sabre, his expression awed and excited. "May I... examine you?"

"That was the deal."

Tassin frowned. "You've seen cybers before."

"Not up close. They don't object, but people would think it odd if I went around peering at cybers, and they won't let a stranger touch them. Anyway, a cursory examination like that won't tell me much."

"That's a defence mechanism," Sabre explained. "Cybers are still vulnerable to a few drugs and poisons."

"Why must you prod and poke him?" Tassin demanded. "He's a man."

Shasen shook his head, approaching Sabre. "Oh no, he's not a normal man. Cyber hosts are genetically enhanced, but that's all top secret."

"Why hasn't any other scientist, one with more money than you, ever examined one?"

"Because scientists with wealth and a reputation have too much to lose, and yeah, probably a few have bought cybers and examined them, but they can't tell anyone what they found, or Myon Two would hear about it. Any attempt to discover cyber secrets is dealt with swiftly and harshly."

"What do they do?"

Shasen picked up an instrument and used it to measure a pinch of Sabre's skin, typing the results into the computer. "That's almost normal. They ruin them, like they did me." He turned to Sabre again. "Okay, I know the list of genetic enhancements in a cyber catalogue, and it's pretty impressive. I want to know the classified stuff. Like how they get the barrinium implants into your brain without scrambling it. There's got to be a network of wiring at the end of those hooks to interface with the brain."

Sabre eyed him. "How does that help your cause?"

"I need to be able to tell people about the cruelties."

"Cyber implantation wasn't painful. I don't remember it, but I do know how it was done." He sighed. "Barrinium is a pneumonic mimicker; it remembers the shapes it formed when it's heated and then cooled. The hooks are formed in a mould with molten barrinium, then flash frozen. They're then squashed into simple pointed spikes and inserted through the holes drilled in my skull. The metal reverts to its former shape inside the brain, but it doesn't open like a flower, it flows, and it takes the resling with it. In six hours the metal has returned to its moulded shape, and the hooks are in place. They can never be removed."

Shasen typed the information into his computer. "And the rest of the reinforcing?"

"The same way, for the skull cap, the rest is simply inserted by surgeons."

"Is the host anaesthetised?"

"No, they don't bother."

"God." Shasen looked sick. "Do you remember that?"

"Vividly."

"Surely the shock should kill them?"

"The cyber controls all bodily functions, including reactions to pain. In some, the control is imperfect, and they sometimes die during the operation unless it's stopped."

Shasen nodded, typing rapidly. "Were you given any drugs when you were growing up?"

"Lots. Steroids to promote muscle development, sedatives to keep the mind pliable, growth hormones and a few others."

Shasen picked up a cable with a sensor on the end of it and turned to Sabre. "May I?" The cyber shrugged, and Shasen approached him. "I need you to open your shirt."

Shasen stuck the sensor onto Sabre's chest and switched on a nearby screen, studying it. "Your resting heart rate is less than thirty beats per minute. That's slow."

Tassin glanced at Kole while Shasen asked questions and Sabre recited technical details she could not understand. Shasen's hands flew over the keyboard. For over an hour, Sabre gave Shasen all the answers that he craved, and the neurologist looked more and more stunned. Kole wandered around the room, examining the equipment and specimens. Tassin sat on the cable-hung chair. When Sabre fell silent, Shasen stopped typing and turned to him.

"Why do you know all this?"

Sabre shrugged. "The cyber remembers everything."

Shasen ran a hand over his hair. "That's horrific. Even worse that I thought. No one knows this stuff."

"Would they care?"

"Some would. Okay, so most of your memory seems to be intact. What did you lose?"

Sabre glanced at Tassin. "I was free before, for a year, when the cyber was first broken. That's all gone."

"He also has co-ordination problems and slowed reflexes," Tassin interjected.

Shasen tapped on the keyboard and studied the image of a brain that appeared on the screen. "If only I could scan your brain, I'd have a better idea of what might be damaged. Unfortunately, the barrinium skull plating makes that impossible. I can have a good guess at where those hooks are, though. It uses your brain to store its data, so it must have hooks here and here."

He pointed at the screen. "When it shocked you, it selected areas that it's not using, so it only wiped out your memories, not its own. It also must have hooks in your motor cortex to control your body, and those areas also received shocks."

"He has convulsions when he fights the cyber," Tassin said.

"Yeah, he would. So we can assume that some of your motor cortex is damaged too. The brain doesn't heal, but it does compensate for damage."

"That's all very interesting, but how can you help him?"

"There's a drug that promotes re-connectivity. I'd like to try that. It should speed up the restoration of your memories, and help to get more back. The motor cortex damage will also benefit, but I recommend that you help it along with exercises. You may also have some brain swelling from the trauma, which I can help with another drug." Shasen went over to a cabinet and unlocked it, taking out two bottles, which he handed to the cyber.

Sabre read the labels and nodded. "These are the correct drugs."

"So you'll allow me to inject you?"

"Yes."

Shasen drew a small amount of each drug into a syringe, mixing them together. "You'll have to remove your shirt."

Sabre obliged, and Shasen studied the thin, pale scars that ran down the centre of his chest and along his arms, shaking his head in amazement. "They did all this in one operation? Bloody butchers."

Shasen tied a band around Sabre's biceps to bring up a vein, slipping the needle in. Tassin looked away as he drew blood into the syringe and injected the drugs. "The side effects of these drugs are drowsiness, some dizziness and dry mouth."

He pulled out the needle, and Sabre put his shirt on again. Shasen turned to Tassin. "What happened to your hands?"

She glanced down at them. "A few cuts."

"May I see them?"

"They've been treated."

"Nevertheless, you probably need a tetanus jab."

She shrugged and allowed him to examine her hands, then inject her.

He turned to Sabre. "Thank you for the information."

The cyber nodded, his eyes drooping. "You can't tell anyone, or Myon Two will come down on you like a tonne of bricks."

"I know, but there are other ways of spreading the word."

Kole chuckled. "Another Net site? I wouldn't recommend it. Myon Two will shut it down in a few hours, and then kill you."

"This time it'll be anonymous. Are they after you, too?"

Kole nodded. "Of course. We wouldn't be here if they weren't."

"Right." He turned to Sabre. "You need another three injections over the next three days."

"Give me the drugs and I'll do it."

Shasen hesitated, then handed the bottles to Tassin, since Sabre looked distinctly sleepy. They left the young neurologist gazing after them with a mixture of regret and sorrow, returning to the ship, where Sabre went straight to sleep. Kole made coffee, and Tassin sat with him on the bridge, gazing out at the spaceport.

Kole turned to her. "He's more than a friend to you, isn't he?"

Tassin glanced at him in surprise. "What makes you say that?"

"I've seen the way you look at him. It's pretty obvious."

She looked down, chewing her lip. "Yes, he is."

"I guess there's no hope for me then."

"I... didn't know you..."

He snorted. "I've tried not to be obvious, but hell, Tassin, you're a beautiful, intelligent girl. Any man would find you irresistible."

"Is that why you've helped me so much?"

"Yeah. I was trying to impress you." He sighed. "You do realise that he has no way of returning your feelings."

"He will when he remembers."

After a short, bitter silence, he murmured, "In that case, I'll access my accounts, refuel, and drop you off on Charon Six, where your top bidder lives. As soon as you've paid me back, you're on your own."

"You're angry with me."

"Hell yeah! There should be a law against girls falling in love with bloody cybers. You misled me. You should have told me the truth in the beginning."

"If I'd told you, you wouldn't have helped me."

"Not as much, no. You used me."

"I didn't know you felt -"

He frowned. "Don't give me that. You knew."

"I wasn't sure. I'm sorry. You've done so much. We both owe you a great debt."

"Yeah, yeah. I just hope I've got a life to go back to. Myon Two is going to make it hell for a while."

She leant forward. "Then come with us. There are plenty of lovely young women on Omega Five."

"No." He gazed at her. "You know what the worst part is? He doesn't feel a damn thing for you. Except gratitude, of course. He'll never be normal, and I doubt he even knows what love is. Hell, he's sure never had it."

"He has, from me, and he returned it."

He shook his head. "How can you be sure that what he feels is really love, and not gratitude or just friendship? Most of us have love our whole lives, from our parents and siblings, then youthful relationships, until we finally find the real thing, hopefully. People who don't have it are messed up."

"If you're trying to talk me out of it, you can't. I know what I feel."

"Will that be enough? They messed with his mind, and in a big way. Look, I like the guy, but he could be psychotic."

"I knew him for a whole year. I was with him every day. He's not... psychotic, whatever that is."

Kole sipped his coffee. "That was three years ago. He could have changed. Going back under cyber control after being free was probably worse than if he'd never known freedom."

She turned away. "I don't want to discuss it."

"Fine. Tomorrow we leave for Charon Six."

"At least he won't have to fight. Why wait until tomorrow?"

"All right." Kole put down his mug and turned to the screen beside him, tapping on the keyboard. Several moments passed, then he leapt up with a foul curse.

"They've frozen my accounts! Those bastards!"

Her heart sank. "There's no money?"

"No!"

Tassin gazed at him, biting her lip. Now that he knew the truth, would he turn them over to Myon Two to make his life easier? There was no longer anything in it for him. "What are we going to do?"

"Your beloved cyber is going to have to earn his keep, that's what."

She closed her eyes as a wave of relief washed over her. "Much as that prospect dismays me, thank you for not turning us over to Myon Two to clear your name."

"Nice thought. Just what kind of a bastard do you take me for?" Kole spun on his heel and marched off the bridge.