Dancers in the Afterglow (16 page)

"First, you must remake your vocabulary. The singular must be banished from your minds. The only singular is the oneness achieved by the melding of minds. Words such as 'I' and 'my' must go; you are becoming a part of something greater. 'I' is a lonely word, and 'my' is a selfish one. To help you, as a teaching aid, we have adjusted those necklaces to react to the singular. Say it, and you will receive a mild shock, similar to a static electricity shock. It will sting, but it will not really harm you. A teaching aid, no more." He turned, walked over to them. "In our next series-of sessions, we will aid the meld. To join with one another, you must think of all people as one, you must translate the semantic 'we' into your actual self-image."

The technique proved to be rather simple, similar in some ways to group psychotherapy sessions held on Combine worlds. A strong hypnotic drug was administered, the first time without their knowledge. One at a time, they were approached and told they were somebody else in the group. Yuri, for example, was told he was Genji, and Yuri
did
act like Genji, talked like him, walked like him, thought he
was
Genji. And the rest of the group was also told that he was Genji, and they treated him as if he were; they saw him as the other man, they believed it. Each one in turn was switched; the impersonations weren't always precise, for they became their own image of the other, but it was convincing.

The twist that made it work was almost diabolical. Ponder
told
them they were all under a drug-induced hypnosis, that he'd only fooled them into thinking they were each other. Yuri, for example, who'd been convinced he was Genji, was suddenly told that, no, he'd been hypnotized, fooled, he was really Azure Pontine!

And he'd believe it, and started acting like her. Physical appearance didn't matter, of course, because if he
believed
he was the woman, and everyone else was told to see him as the woman, then external reality had little to do with anything. The program was remarkably effective and every few hours they would become someone else.

After four days of this, no one, male or female, was certain who he or she was. And, as each of them became others, lived a little like the others, he carried over characteristics from previous impersonations.

The words "we," "us," and "our" which their collars forced on them became more and more natural, not only because the only way to keep from being shocked was to reorganize their minds to use the correct pronouns normally and naturally, but also because they continually experienced being one another. The role reversals caused a great deal of confusion and disorientation at first, but they were played out against the established routines, the exercises, the songs Ponder taught them, the dances they created to perform themselves. Together, there was always work to do, cleaning up the camp, dismantling the old, primitive base, and using tools dropped by flyers to erect comfortable sleeping quarters, a kitchen, and storage facilities. New implements and supplies turned their patchwork farm into a more professional one. And, from the time they awakened until they all went to sleep, they were constantly together, constantly busy, with no chance to get away, to think.

They couldn't be sure who they were, and they couldn't be sure who anybody else was; all they were . certain of was that they were not who they thought they were and that nobody else was who they thought they were, either. But, within just a few more days, they had all—each in his own way and at his own speed— crossed a barrier: Suddenly it didn't matter to them who was who and who they were. When Ponder decreased the dosages until they no longer had any hypnotic influences, it didn't matter. They didn't know it, wouldn't have trusted the information anyway. Self-identity was impossible to determine, and they learned to live without it.

Ponder was well pleased. He hadn't even had to adjust the necklaces to eliminate names; names were irrelevant to this group now. Slowly, carefully, he adjusted vocabularies, limited and shaped their thoughts using disorientation and conditioning.

Despite the shortcuts, despite the time pressures, his group was almost totally Machist now. Almost. The rest still needed time.

Time...

Diatonic

THE CAVE DWELLERS OF THE HURLEY MAMA WERE
stunned when they awoke. Daniel had worked through the night, knocking a number of guards cold and killing three more in the process, but he'd been successful.

Before sunup, all the food as' well as most of the spare weapons and ammunition and over three hundred medikits had been moved into the caves, and he'd carefully placed materials from a secret cache near the settlement. Now he waited patiently.

The guards' bodies were discovered just after dawn, and this raised a general alarm which brought out most of the population, including the bulk of Rolvag's Concubines.

They found Daniel, still in the guise of the strange Latin woman, sitting relaxed on the ledge in front of Amara's cave, idly juggling some small objects.

One of the Concubines yelled for him to come down, and raised her rifle threateningly.

"Before you shoot," he called back, "I have all the supplies in these two caves, and I've lined the caves with these." He held up two objects, small yellow ovals. Almost idly, he tossed one—a championship throw— over their heads and into the trees beyond.

It exploded, and a tree toppled over.

He smiled sweetly at them.

"If you get me, the one I have set goes off. If you don't get me, I can toss this one in."

They didn't like that, and there were murmurs and a slight pullback of the crowd.

"Where is Rolvag and the Princess?" one of the guards demanded.

"The Princess was injured when I took her energy pistol," he told them, and there were shocked whispers. "Rolvag's tied up for now, and I destroyed
his
pistol."

They liked that even less. The guards, that is.

The people suddenly got a collective idea. "That means we're free of the bastards!" came the whispers, which turned into a roar. Suddenly the guards found themselves having to turn their shotguns on the mob rather than Daniel.

"Take it easy!" the mysterious woman on the ledge called to them. It took several tries to get them calmed down.

"You have me all wrong. You haven't been liberated. You've just changed bosses," Daniel told them.

The temper of the crowd changed again, and the guns were back on him once more. There were murmurs of "Machists" and "clear out" from the group.

"I'm no Machist," Daniel assured them. "I'm Captain Daniel, of the Combine Navy."

This revelation caused an even louder uproar. Daniel glumly reflected how stupid and malleable a mob was. This one had changed sides several times in three minutes.

"Then—then we're liberated by the Combine?" came a hopeful voice from the crowd. ,

"Sorry, no. That is, not yet," he responded. "They're coming, they really are. That's why they sent me here. But they need your help."

The prospect of liberation, of an end to their existence in the bush, and memories of wonderful Lamarine swept through them—the guards included. They wanted more.

"Listen, I'll tell you what this is all about," Daniel began, and proceeded to do so. He spared little, including the tale of how the
first
Combine agent had been brutally murdered by Sten Rolvag. Most of them had felt Rolvag was right at the time, but you couldn't find one willing to admit it.

He explained to them the need for time, the possibility of trapping the Machists without supplies or a means to get away, trapping them so they could be rounded up by the people themselves.

"Think of putting little silver collars on
them,"
Daniel suggested, and they cheered. "The road won't be easy," he warned, "and we must do our part as quickly as possible."

He had them. They'd have marched on Lamarine in a minute.

"But you'd be massacred by those goon soldiers right now," he told them. "So we'll train. We'll have a basic-training camp right here. You'll be in the marines. And you'll be taught to use the funny little eggs here, and bigger stuff, and how to move it just so. And we want that to happen with the fewest possible injuries."

The little band had little loyalty to Rolvag, so was ready for a change. Many had misgivings, but this gave them hope, the promise of revenge, the promise of a future. They would go along with Daniel.

The guards were also ready to change sides, and the fact that Daniel looked like a woman actually helped. Finally a demonstration of what he could do in hand-to-hand combat and the bending of two shotgun barrels almost completely around made the conversion complete. They had little liking for or loyalty to Rolvag; they'd just liked to be the elite who ran things.

And they were, still.

He found several men and women who were former service people, and they helped the guards train the population. Mostly physical conditioning, which wasn't popular, some marksmanship, and lots of regimentation and discipline, reward and punishment.

Daniel's biggest surprise was Amara.

After his first big day, he'd returned to the cave where she lay, recovering from her wounds. A few people had come in to clean up the place—and, incidentally, to attest to the presence of the strange-looking whirring explosives to the doubters below—and she was lying on the broad air mattress.

Daniel was busy checking the explosives and making sure that there would be room for the big stuff he'd ordered and which was due any day via fast module, first to him in orbit, then down to Ondine. He was aware, suddenly, that she was awake; watching him. He turned. "Hello!" be said cheerfully. "How are you feeling?"

She turned her head, looked at her armless right side, then her equally barren left. The medipack had worked in well; except for an ever-so-slight ridge of lighter color, she looked as if she'd been born without arms. "Ashamed," she answered him. He smiled, came over to her. Even armless, she was a beautiful woman. "I mean the arms," he said.

She smiled wanly. "Okay, I suppose. There are occasional twinges of pain, and the wounds itch a lot. I keep trying to scratch."

"Those are the nerves. Want me to deaden them for you?"

"No, no, that's all right," she responded. Her whole manner, her personality seemed different, almost as if she were a different person from yesterday's haughty tigress. "You know, I tried to get up and put out my right arm to steady myself. I could actually
feel it.
Of course, it wasn't there and I fell."

"That's normal," he told her. "When the Combine retakes Ondine, you'll be able to grow new arms."

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I don't know. I think it's a punishment of some kind." She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. "I can't believe what I was like. I come from a good home. Navy brat, really. Honor-class marine. And then I get here, and—" She turned her head away. "I must have gone crazy, completely mad. It seems like a nightmare now. I was horrible."

He sighed. "Don't condemn yourself too much. The repression drugs they give marines are pretty severe. That's why you're never given shore leave for more than seventy-eight hours—the drugs start wearing off at ninety. You go through decontam before a leave so they can let you down nicely. If you just come down straight, everything you've repressed inside you bursts out savagely. It's a shame, but those drugs are the only way to keep shipboard marines from going nuts."

She looked up at bun. "If only I hadn't missed the ship! If only I had gotten the call!"

"Why didn't you?" he asked her.

"I—I was—you're going to laugh," she said.

"No I won't."

"I was riding every tram in the city," she managed. "Silly, isn't it? But in the early morning there's almost no one on them, and it's quiet and peaceful, and the fresh air blows constantly."

He nodded understandingly. After months confined to a ship, getting liberty in Lamarine while still on repressives left few outs. Gamble, swim, shop for souvenirs, little else. The repressives kept you from any sexual desires, prevented you from getting high, and, unless the proper go-codes were initiated, made you so gentle you couldn't swat a mosquito.

That left fresh air, and getting away from people and that crowded feeling you had too much of on the ship.

She was looking at him again, hard.

"You know, you're a strange woman," she said wonderingly. "I never saw anybody move so fast, or just ignore good body-blows. And your manner—I was watching you. Very mannish. Are you on male hormones? Or did you have a sex change?"

He laughed. "Sort of the last," he replied. "Actually, all this is a put-on. I—ah, one of my colleagues came in as a man, got zapped by Rolvag. We were monitoring the episode. We're all male, you see, but it was decided that only an attractive girl could sucker Rolvag. I was elected."

She whistled. "That's some lab you must have! If I had that face and body I'd be the top poster girl on a thousand planets. It's almost a crime to waste it like that."

"The process can be reversed," he told her.
"Will
be, sooner or later."

She shook her head glumly. "That's what I mean. Can't you just give it to me somehow?"

He laughed. "Not the way
we
do things," he replied lightly. "But don't worry. A pair of arms and you're plenty enough for anybody."

She smiled again and closed her eyes. He leaned over and kissed her.

Now why the hell did I do that?
he wondered.
Damn! I'm not even really here!

She opened those big brown eyes and looked into his.