Tassin walked along a dim corridor, her heart fluttering. A servant had informed her of Sabre's waking only minutes ago, while she was bent over a pile of parchment, signing decrees and offers of alliance from Arlin's lords. She had been apprised of his whereabouts, and wished she could run to him. Servants stepped from her path, bowing, and she turned into a passage that led to an unused area of the castle, closed off many years ago. She had visited him every day while he had been unconscious, sat beside him and held his hand, hoping he would wake. Affairs of state took up most of her time, but whatever free time she had she spent at his bedside. She pushed open the third door along the passage and entered a bright room filled with modern equipment.
Sabre lay on a white, moulded plastic bed. Tarl removed a drip from his arm and took down the empty bag. Arriving at Sabre's side, she gazed down at him. His eyes glowed silver when they flicked up to meet hers. Spots of blood flecked his right shoulder, along with small round red areas. Her throat closed, and hot tears filled her eyes as she slid her arms around his neck and laid her cheek on his shoulder.
He tensed a little, but held her, rubbing her back. "Hey, it's okay, I'm fine. Tarl fixed me."
She gulped. "I'm just so glad you're all right."
"I'm all better, promise. Don't cry."
Tassin straightened, blinking. "I'm not crying."
"Right. Of course not; warrior queens don't cry."
"No, they don't."
"Good. You must have got dust in your eyes then."
She rubbed them. "It's dusty in those corridors."
Sabre sat up and studied her. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, fine." She hugged him again. "I was so worried about you."
"It was just a broken shoulder."
"No, I meant when you were fighting Dellon's men."
"Ah, right."
"I wanted to help you, but he wouldn't let me." Tassin drew back to glare at Tarl.
"Really? What did he do?"
"He manhandled me, dragged me around, and pushed me up a tree."
"Manhandled you?"
Tassin nodded, frowning. "He was rude."
"Was he now?" Sabre shot Tarl a narrow-eyed glance. "He pushed you up a tree?"
"And he dragged me around. I have bruises." She pushed up her sleeves, but her arms were unmarked. "I had them."
"Really." Sabre slid off the couch and turned to Tarl. "So why didn't you have him flogged?"
"It doesn't merit a flogging."
"It definitely merits something, though, don't you agree?"
"Yes." Tassin was a little uncertain now, glancing at Tarl, who looked from one to the other, his mouth open.
Sabre approached Tarl, his attitude menacing, and the luckless cyber tech jumped up and backed away, raising his hands.
"Hey, hang on, bud, I was keeping her safe, like you asked me to. She would have come running in here and got herself killed!"
"By shoving her around?"
"I didn't shove her!"
Sabre closed the gap when Tarl encountered the wall, and his hands shot out to grip the tech's shoulders. Tarl flinched, shook his head and tried to push Sabre away.
"Wait! Sabre, don't, I..."
Sabre yanked Tarl into a bear hug, and the tech’s air left him in a groan. Tassin was sure his ribs must have creaked in protest.
"Thanks bud." Sabre held him away and grinned, patting him on the shoulder, then gripped his neck and gave him a little shake.
Tarl clasped his ribs, looking confused and relieved.
Tassin's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "'Thanks, bud'?"
Sabre turned to her. "Absolutely. He kept you safe, like I asked him to."
"He gave me bruises!"
"I don't see any, and, even if he did, he must have had to, and I'll bet he had more than you."
"I did," Tarl agreed. "She slapped and scratched."
"I wanted to help you," she said, glaring at Tarl.
Sabre sighed and approached her. "All you'd have done was get in the middle of everything and caused more problems. You might have been hurt."
She frowned at him. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? I heard the laser shots coming from the castle, and...”
“Hey, hush.” Sabre drew her into his arms. “I know you were worried, but you mustn’t try to come to my rescue, okay? No matter how much you want to. If you do, I’ll just end up having to protect you as well, which makes it more difficult for me. Killing… Combat is what I’m designed for. I’m good at it.”
Tarl slipped out and closed the door behind him.
She hugged Sabre, shaking her head. “I can’t stop worrying about you, and you’re not invincible. Dellon might have killed you if I hadn’t got there when I did.”
"Not a chance. He was already defeated, he just didn’t know it yet, and his knights were finished. I relaxed when your men arrived; otherwise I’d have kept going long enough to finish them off, too."
“It looked to me a lot like he was trying to chop off your head.”
“He was, but I knew he couldn’t, and I knew when he tried, he’d lose his sword and then he’d be easier to kill. I had everything under control.”
Tassin held him tighter. “You’re just trying to stop me worrying about you next time, but there isn’t going to be a next time. I don’t ever want you to have to fight again.”
“That would be nice, but I don’t think Myon Two is going to give up any time soon. Now they know I have something they want, the gene sequence for fire-resistant skin, they’re going to come after me even more. They want to use me as a prototype, to show clients so they’ll place orders and pay deposits for the new cybers that will be ready in twenty years’ time. Sooner, if they can retro fit it with a gene-splicing virus.”
She leant back to look up at him. “But you’re safe on Omega.”
“Like I said before, I don’t think the fact that this is a restricted world will stop them.”
“Then you’ll be safe in the castle.”
He shook his head. “Not if they send cybers.”
“So what are you saying? That it’s hopeless? After all we’ve been through to get you here, where I thought you’d be safe, they’re going to come and take you away again?”
Sabre hesitated, loath to alarm her further and ruin her triumph. “No. Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe they won’t. Maybe Fairen’s order will prevent them. Let’s hope for that, okay?”
“I will, but you had better not be thinking about leaving. You promised to stay, and if you leave I’ll just hunt you down again.”
He smiled. “I know.”
“Good.”
Tassin pulled him closer and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, her lips soft and warm. A sudden, powerful urge to lash out at her almost overwhelmed him, and he drew back and released her, rubbed his brow and encountered the cyber band. When she had hugged him earlier, he had discovered that the flashing light in his mind had returned, only now it was a red proximity warning, and much more intrusive. He had switched it off, but now he had this new, alarming compulsion that could only come from the control unit, and the fact that it was directed at Tassin perturbed him.
She frowned at him, clearly puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
"I don’t know." He gripped the brow band, the longing to rip it off that so often filled him stronger than ever.
“It’s that damned thing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Tassin sank down on the exam couch. “Is there no end to that thing’s… cruelties? What did it do to you now?”
“Maybe it was just a malfunction.”
“You’re not a damned machine.”
“Part of me is,” he said, and she slumped, her attitude despondent. Sabre sat beside her and enfolded her in his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” She turned to him and hugged him. “I just wish you weren’t…”
“A cyborg?”
“Yeah. Maybe Tarl can help?”
“Maybe.”
Tassin drew back and glared at the control unit. “Please switch it off.”
“Why?”
She met his eyes. “Just to see what happens.”
“Nothing happens.” He looked away from her pleading gaze, and the control unit’s virtual dashboard and scanner information vanished as he turned it off.
“How do you feel now?”
“Empty.”
“You miss it?”
Sabre shrugged. “I guess so, in a way. I’m used to it. It’s like half of me is gone, now.”
“I thought you’d be glad to be rid of it.”
“I am, but… I don’t really feel complete without it. It’s part of who I am.”
Tassin shook her head. “It’s part of who you were. Without it, you’re entirely human. Isn’t that what you want to be?”
“I haven’t stopped being a cyborg just because I’ve switched off the control unit. Sure, I feel less like one, but it just makes me a crippled cyborg.”
She hesitated, looking doubtful. “I really don’t want you to be… Maybe you just need to get used to being without it.”
He took her hand, frowning at it. “You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me, then. Why would you want to keep something you hate?”
“It provides useful information… and it guides me.”
“How can you learn to be human when you’re being guided by a machine? Let’s ask Tarl.”
He nodded. “I will.”
“So call him.”
He looked up at her in alarm. “No, not now.”
“Why not?”
“You… I can’t tell him… with you here. You won’t like it.”
“You don’t know that. I might not mind it.”
He shook his head. “No, you definitely won’t like it.”
“I want to know.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“How can I help you if I don’t know what the problem is?”
Sabre realised that she was not going to give up. Tassin never did, and he could not lie to her. Neither could he tell her the whole truth, as that would certainly upset her, but he could tell her part of it. He just hoped she would not find even that too upsetting.
“You can’t help.” He sighed. "It gave me a proximity warning, okay? A red light. It used to be just an amber alert."
"What does that mean?"
"It reacted as if you’re a stranger."
"So, what, now it doesn’t like me?"
"No, it doesn’t have likes or dislikes, but something’s changed."
"You’re right, I don’t like it,” she said. “I really don’t want you to have warning lights flashing in your brain every time I come close to you. I thought that stopped after you got control of the brow band?"
"It did. It won’t do it again. I’ve stopped it now."
"Oh. Okay, good." She stood up. “I must go; I have a lot of work to do."
Tassin left, and Sabre bowed his head, pondering this new and unwelcome turn of events. Although he was able to stop the warning light, the urge to lash out at her was far more alarming. A minute later Tarl came in, his brows rising at Sabre’s despondent pose.
"What’s wrong, bud?" Sabre explained, and the cyber tech looked thoughtful. "If the spacer who loaned you to her told Myon Two that you had a relationship with a woman, perhaps they added something to the cyber's programming to prevent it from happening again, in the unlikely event that she succeeded in tracking you down and freeing you again."
"She swore she would, and, knowing Tassin, she would have told Manutim that, too, in no uncertain terms. Could it be another software patch?"
"It's possible.”
Sabre looked down at his hand, clenching it. "Could you find it?"
Tarl shook his head. "Bud, there are over five hundred terabytes of information and programming in the control unit. Searching through it would take years. There's no operating system as such, except the cyber itself. Why don't you just order it to find out?"
Sabre switched the control unit on and closed his eyes, concentrating on the streams of scrolling data that appeared in his mind at his command. He opened them again a second later.
"Nothing's been added, but something has been deleted."
"What?"
"Subroutine X783."
"Can you recover it?"
Sabre shook his head.
"Okay, lie down; let's see what I can do."
The cyber stretched out on the exam couch, and Tarl plugged the access cable into the edge of the brow band again. He tapped the keys on his console and studied the information that scrolled up his screen.
"I don't see it. How do you know it's been deleted?"
"There's an index marker in the DAT, but no data."
Tarl typed a command on the keypad. "The entire X series of subroutines is dedicated to biological functions and human interactions, but what harm could deleting one do?"
"How would I know? I'm just the tool."
"Okay, I've found the marker; let's see if I can restore the data." Tarl typed on the keyboard for several minutes, his brow furrowed in concentration, then nodded. "There, got it." He read the words that scrolled up the screen. "Oh, shit."
"What?"
"It's a passive response subroutine." He scowled. "Those bastards!"
"What?"
Tarl turned his stool to face Sabre. "There are tens of thousands of subroutines in the control unit, some for the most insignificant matters, and a few of them are vital."
"I don't need a lecture; just tell me what they did."
"X783 is a minor subroutine that deals with contact, and what contact constitutes a threat and what doesn't. While cybers will only allow their owners to touch them, this is a safety feature for rare occasions when a stranger might get the urge to kiss a cyber, or hug him. It tells the cyber that in such a situation, if no threat is sensed, he shouldn't react with damaging force, but just a defensive measure, like pushing the person away. By deleting it, Cybercorp intended that you would be capable of doing serious harm to someone who gave you a kiss or hug. The lack of this information made the defensive subroutines, which your brain still uses as reference data, that much more... intrusive, I suppose. Without the passive response to contact, all you had were the active response subroutines."
“This must be why I had a proximity alert light every time Tassin was close to me, even when she owned the cyber or had command privilege.”
Tarl nodded. “Yeah, this would do it.”
“You've restored it now, though, right?"
"Yeah. They couldn't erase it without formatting the storage medium, and you can't format a brain. All they did was delete the path to it from the DAT in the control unit, which hid it from you, apparently."
“Why didn’t I know what they did?” Sabre asked.
“It was a minor programming change, not something that would be included in the cyber’s interface with the brain, although you found the missing link pretty easily when you looked for it.”
"How many passive response subroutines are there?"
"Over a five thousand, dealing with word phrases, hand gestures, eye movements, and all the different kinds of unintelligible noises people sometimes make. It has to deal with every aspect of human interaction, and it must know how to respond to every single one."
"So what should the cyber's response have been, to a kiss?"
Tarl shrugged. "From his owner, nothing, from a stranger, a push away."
Sabre sat up. "That's it."
"What?"
"After Tassin freed me, she owned the cyber, so all I had was a proximity alert. Even after the cyber was registered to Fairen, she had command privilege, now she doesn’t even have that. I deleted all the registration data after the battle, remember? That’s why the cyber gave me a proximity warning instead of an alert, which I switched off, but then when she kissed me I had a strong urge to lash out at her. It was scary."
Tarl nodded. "Sure, if she had command privilege, or was the cyber's owner, her proximity wouldn't have triggered your stranger response subroutine. When Grundel reregistered the cyber with Myon Two, he must have overlooked her command privilege, so you were okay until you purged the data. Also, the more intimate the contact, the more powerful the response would be, so, while you only had a warning light for hugs, you had a far more violent reaction to a kiss."
"How does it work?"
"Well, it's like conditioning. When you perceive something, you automatically look for an appropriate response to it. Normal people learn this stuff while they're growing up, or as they go along, but yours is all programmed into your reference data. Like if I do this..." Tarl raised his middle finger. "What would your response be?"
Sabre lifted his hand and raised the same finger. "What does it mean?"
"That's a bit of programmer humour. But that's how it works. You just know how to respond, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"Reference data. You’ll just have to register her as the cyber’s owner again, and, now that I’ve restored that subroutine, you won’t’ have any more urges to clobber her."
“That’s a relief.” Sabre accessed the control unit’s registration information and wrote Tassin’s name in the ‘owner’ field and saved it. He only wanted one person to own any part of him, and that was the girl who already owned his heart, and would never hurt or betray him.
“Yeah, that must have been pretty shitty,” Tarl said. “Good thing you have none of those reactions to me, because of my tattoo. I doubt you’d have made such an effort to hold back, in my case.” He unplugged the data cable, coiled it and hung it on the machine. "I know why Fairen finds you so pleasant to be around, as an empath. Your mind is uncluttered, unemotional. A purely functional data storage facility, devoid of all the usual baggage people acquire while they're growing up. To him, it must be like a nice cool shower." He hesitated. "Would you mind if I ran some tests?"
"What kind?"
"To see how you react to certain things. I want to see how human you’re becoming."
Sabre nodded. "Okay."
"I'll have to ask some personal questions."
"Okay."
"Lie down." Tarl patted the table. "And close your eyes."
"You want to do it now?"
"Why not? You have something better to do?”
Sabre lay back and closed his eyes. "I guess not."
"Good. Okay, so… I know Tassin means a lot to you, but how do you know you love her? Describe your feelings."
"I enjoy being with her -"
"Define enjoy."
"It makes me happy."
"Define happy."
Sabre sighed. "Warm, here." He tapped his chest. "Relaxed, untroubled. I smile a lot."
"Okay. How would you feel if another man kissed her, and she liked it?"
Sabre's brow furrowed. "I don't know. Nothing."
"You wouldn't be angry?"
"Not if she liked it."
"You wouldn't be sad?" Tarl asked.
"No."
"Not even a little?"
"No." Sabre opened his eyes. "That's not normal, is it?"
"Not for a human. For a cyber, it is."
"Why should it make me sad?"
"Because it would mean that she liked another man, maybe more than you. It should actually make you jealous."
"Define jealous."
Tarl gazed down at Sabre. "You know what, bud? This is a shitty idea. Let's just forget it."
"Why?"
"Because I feel like I'm questioning a bloody machine, and I don't like it." He jumped up and walked away, rubbing his neck.
Sabre sat up. "Why does that bother you?"
"Because you're my friend!" Tarl swung around, scowling. "You saved my life. I want you to be human."
"I am."
"No, you're not. You still don't think like a human. You don't have the right emotional responses."
"So you think I'm not human?"
Tarl walked back, shaking his head. "I look at you, I see a man. I talk to you, I hear a machine. I don't know what the hell you are. Your responses seem normal. You even make jokes, but it's... You're... Damn it! Why did you give Tassin all your air when you were in the pod?"
"I love her. I wanted to save her."
"Oh, god. Now I understand."
"What?"
"It's your conditioning. Access subroutine W473. Read what it says."
Sabre frowned. "The cyber-bio unit is expendable. Primary function: owner preservation. Secondary function: preservation of persons with command privilege or those designated by owner or persons with command privilege. Cyber unit preservation allowed only if owner and persons with command privilege or those designated -"
"Okay, okay, it goes on and on. Basically what it says is that all those people are more important than you, and you can't put your life above theirs, or avoid injury if you have to stick your hand in a meat grinder to save them. That's why you wouldn't feel sad or jealous if Tassin liked another man. Your conditioning tells you that you're not important enough. You would just accept it. Why are you so bitter about being treated like equipment?"
"Because I still remember what it was like to be equipment, made to stand guard for hours without moving, unable to say what I wanted, cut up and tortured, packed into a casket when I wasn’t needed… Sometimes when you do stuff to me, or carp about my bio-status, it makes feel like I’m still equipment, and that makes me angry. I know I’ll never be a real man, but..."
"Okay, okay." Tarl returned to Sabre’s side and plugged the cable into the brow band again, reading the monitor. "Your heart rate is up to one forty. You're experiencing an emotional reaction. Maybe the only other one you have, apart from your feelings for Tassin. But it's something."
Sabre looked up at him. "What does that tell you?"
"That, in time, you could develop other emotional responses, like jealousy. It's a good sign."
Sabre unplugged the cable. "And when you stop plugging me into a monitor, that will be a good sign that you've stopped treating me like equipment."
"You're angry." Tarl shook his head. "The only way to piss you off is to treat you like a machine."
"Or hurt Tassin."
"Yeah, that's because for a whole year, the cyber forced you to protect her. It's become part of your conditioning."
"No." Sabre stared into space, frowning. "It's not that. The cyber did prompt me, and punished me on occasion, but I wanted to help her. I was trapped by it, yeah, but I didn't mind so much.
"Why is that?"
He hesitated, looking a little embarrassed. "I thought she was beautiful, and... I wanted to stay with her, look after her."
Tarl nodded. "I guess some basic instincts weren’t completely cut off by the brain block. You developed a stunted set of emotional responses in the year you were with her before, I would guess. When those memories were blocked off, you became a clean slate, as Myon Two intended. Although your memories have been restored, the emotional responses you developed haven't, so you're back to square one in that department. But, given enough time, you will develop them again. You need another year or so of uncomplicated human interaction. You have a massive inferiority complex, and you're suffering from post-traumatic stress."
"Great." Sabre sighed. "Is there any hang up I don't have?"
"What do you think you'd feel if I died?"
"I don't know. Sad?"
"That's what you should feel, yeah. But you're just guessing, aren't you? You can't actually imagine feeling sad about my death."
"Not really. Maybe I'd feel it, though, if it happened. I could always kill you and find out."
Tarl chuckled. "Yeah, right. You hate killing, remember? Why is that?"
"It's... something I was forced to do. It's what I was designed to do, and... I don't want to hurt people. I never did."
Tarl placed a hand on Sabre's shoulder. "That's because you're a good guy, bud. No amount of conditioning or programming can ever change your personality."
Sabre rose and went to the door, glancing back before opening it. "Thanks."
The tech smiled and waved a depreciating hand. He leant back, then realised that the stool had no back, grabbed the trolley as he fell and landed with a grunt and a shrill clatter of instruments. Sabre chuckled and left the cyber-tech to pick himself up out of the debris.
Sabre pushed open the door to his room and froze as an alien life sign appeared on the scanners, sweeping the room with his eyes. A strange grey lump lay in the middle of the bed, and he approached it, trying to make out what it was. A pointed-eared head lifted, and yellow eyes gazed up at him from a black bandit's mask.
Sabre grinned. "Purr!"
The mosscat stretched, revealing pointed teeth in a strange grin, and his disembodied voice spoke from the air before him. "Friend Sabre. It's about time you returned."
"It's great to see you, Purr. Where have you been hiding?"
"In the forest, for the last three years."
Sabre sat on the edge of the bed. "Are you well?"
"I'm fine. I was getting fat, anyway. This land is easy to live in for me."
"Yeah, a Death Zone creature would find it easy."
Purr sat up and groomed his belly fur. "I had a feeling Tassin would find you. She doesn't give up, that one. She ransacked this castle for three years, looking for that sword."
"Yeah, she was pissed off with me for hiding it."
"It's good that you're back. I'm glad."
"Me too."