Dancers in the Afterglow (19 page)

Daniel's bodies
were
symbs, of course, but with a difference. Energy-linked to the incredible computer that was part of him, they were extensions, rather than copies, of him.

"I was a fighter pilot," he began, and he wound up telling her just about everything.

"What's it like?" she asked curiously. "I mean, being in an artificial body?"

"Not very much fun," he replied honestly. "Not like being in a real body."

"Are there many like you?" she prodded.

"No. Not that I know of, anyway. I'm the prototype. I
hope
I'm unique," he added.

She looked surprised. "Oh, I don't know. Being almost immortal, able to be all those different people at the same time, go anywhere you please,
be
anybody or anything you please, with all that superhuman power, having the knowledge and speed of a computer—" she sighed and lay back "—I think that would be fantastic. No human needs, no hang-ups, no sex hormones or trapped biology. You wouldn't need
anybody."

He lay back, wondering how to respond, how to tell her, wondering if he
could
tell her in a way she would comprehend.

"You're wrong," he said at last, "Wrong about not having human needs, wrong about not needing anybody." He shifted, looked directly into her eyes. "Look, as a service brat and later a marine, you attended a lot of parties, right?" She nodded, and he continued, "Well, did you ever go to a party where you didn't know anybody, and you stood there, by yourself, unable to make friends with anybody, watching them all enjoy themselves while you just sat there?"

"A couple of times," she admitted. "When I was young, and used to go to all those dreadful affairs with my parents."

"Well," he went on
,
"suppose
every
party you went to was like that? I mean every time, without exception?"

"Thay'd be horrible," she replied, imagining it. "I'd stop going to parties after a while. Become a hermit or something."

He nodded. "Well, suppose you
had
to go to parties? Constantly. Day in and day out. And they were all like that."

She sighed. "I think I'd kill myself," she answered truthfully.

He smiled the grim smile of satisfaction. "That's what it's like. I'm at the party now. I'm at a party every bit of the time—maybe lots of parties at once. I can exist in the party, even act the life of the party, even wind up
running
the party—but I can never join it as a participant. Like with us. I
do
love you, Amara, if you can believe a machine can love. I want to be able to love you, to feel you as others can, body and soul. I want it so badly it's tearing me apart. I
need
you. But it can never be. I don't
have
a body to give, or receive, or even to touch you. Just a remote control system on a plastine copy of a person."

"There's more to it than that," she responded. "I knew you were a symb from the start. It didn't make any difference. We touched minds, Daniel. I never believed it was possible. Oh, I'd heard about it, and been told about it by others, but never me. Oh, I suppose I had some romantic notion that if your symb would fall for me then the real you, somewhere out there, would, too. But, now that I know, it
doesn't matter,
Daniel. Can you understand that?"

He couldn't. It mattered to him.

She sighed again. "I'll bet if they knew the problem they could do something about it I wonder if they could put a second brain in that egg case of yours? Wouldn't that be wild? Kind of like sharing the same mind. Together. Forever."

"An interesting dream, even a beautiful one, a really romantic one," he responded. "But I don't think it'd work. Suppose we wanted a divorce? Suppose you didn't like it? Being cut off from humanity is terrible, but being able to see it, walk through it, and still not be able to be a part of it is sheer hell."

She shook her head. "It's something to think about, isn't it?" She looked at him hard, her tone turning serious. "Listen, remember this. I love you, Daniel. Nobody else. I'm a part of you, just as much as that thing I'm talking to. And you're a part of me. Nothing will ever change that." She chuckled suddenly. "It can't be lust, remember."

"You'll feel differently someday," he told her. "You have a future, and I have an endless series of presents. Don't cut yourself off from that future. I know
I'd
give anything to have one."

"This kind of present is good enough for me," she replied, and kissed him on his plastine nose.

They started across the plains at dusk, breaking up into small groups for easier movement, less likelihood of detection, and to insure that, even if things went wrong, some would get through. They were warned to avoid contact with anyone on the plains at all costs, and were given their rendezvous positions within the city.

Daniel, Amara, and four others he trusted went first down the most direct path to the spaceport and supply terminal area. About an hour in, a flyer came straight at them, red and green running lights clearly visible, and it swept over them so fast at treetop level that they didn't have time to scatter.

Daniel and the others were certain that they'd been spotted, but the thing whirred on into the distance and was gone.

"Do you think they know we're here?" Amara asked nervously.

Daniel shrugged. "I don't know. You never know about those things. We'll just have to see if there's any unusually heavy flyer activity as we press on. They may just pass us off as parts of their own groups if they don't get too close a look."

There was no choice, and they continued to press on. Each group had someone who'd lived long in Lamarine and knew the coastal rain forest well.

They came very close to some of the camps, and looked at them in wonder.

The places were identically designed; they were all in large clearings or meadows, some obviously stripped by machine just for the purpose of the camps. All had water sources; if one of Ondine's countless streams didn't run through the camp, a catch basin had been made for the abundant rainfall.

That rainfall slowed their progress, too, as one of the great thunder and lightning displays soaked them, turned the ground to deep, slippery mud, and stopped them completely for half an hour.

Daniel's group was near one of the camps when the storm hit. They watched carefully, afraid that they would be spotted in the lightning flashes. They'd taken a mild risk crossing an open area as a quick way around a swollen stream, and the downpour caught them in the middle. They flattened in the mud and muck and looked at the large barracks area where the people of the camp were sleeping bunched together on straw. One side of the building was open to the outside but the slanted roof extended far outward. The rain washed off the roof, landed a good three meters from the barracks, and ran into a channel which led to the stream.

The wind swirled around, caused some of the rain to sweep into the barracks, and awakened the people. It would have been natural for them to sleep through the storm; the sound of falling water was so commonplace that they had learned to ignore it. The water itself they could not ignore, and they stirred. Some moved to lower a thickly woven straw mat across the open side, just inside the roof cornice. It would be suffocating for any length of time, but it would keep them dry for the duration of a short storm.

"God! Look at them!" Amara exclaimed through the thunder. "They all look like fugitives from a weight lifter's convention. Are those two lowering the mat male or female? They both have bigger breasts than I do!"

Daniel saw what she meant. Although he couldn't magnify, and was experiencing the same strobe effect as everyone else due to the frequent lightning, he had better resolution.

"The one on the left's a man, the one on the right is a woman," he told her.

"Could've fooled me," grumbled another man nearby.

And, as usually happens, as soon as they had the mat completely lowered, the torrential rains stopped, almost as if someone had just turned off a faucet

Daniel helped Amara to her feet with her heavy load. "Let's make a run for it before they get that mat back up," he suggested.

They needed no more encouragement. The ground was slippery, and Amara's surefootedness deserted her. She fell on her side with an exclamation. Daniel was right behind her, and, urging the others to the safety of the trees, he quickly unstrapped the launcher from her back, tossing it like so many grams of paper just into the trees.

"Did you hurt yourself?" he asked her, concerned. She shook her head. "I don't think so. Just bruised my leg."

He picked her up and glanced back at the barracks for a moment. And froze.

Between lightning flashes, he could see the whole village of farmers was moving toward them. Amara looked up and saw them.

"Oh. Lord! What do we do now?" she muttered. "Fake it," he told her. "That launcher is a little too obvious just over there. I don't think they saw it, but if they did we may have to knock out the group. If they didn't, I'm not going to give away the other people and the supplies by running to them." He sighed. "Well, you've been wondering what they're like. Now we're going to find out."

The villagers approached the pair without any apparent fear, evidently just curious. The sight was strange enough—a tall, exotic-looking woman holding a slightly smaller, armless woman. Both were caked with mud. Daniel looked hard at the muscular builds of the people. He realized that chemical and hormonal agents must have been used to get them to that state so quickly, particularly to develop the markedly masculine musculature of the women. They looked as if they were made of rock, and the least of them appeared capable of uprooting small trees singlehandedly. Daniel wondered if even his robot body could hold its own against such as these.

"We greet," said a woman whose voice had the peculiar characteristics of both male and female; a byproduct of the hormones, Daniel guessed. "Come to clean, to rest," she invited.

Daniel and Amara looked at the villagers strangely, both thinking:
They are more alien inside than outside. These are the same ordinary people found everywhere less than a year ago, and now they are different creatures. How is it possible?

"The one is broke," a man noted, pointing to Amara. His voice sounded almost identical to the woman's.

"Let me do the talking," Daniel whispered in Amara's ear, then started walking deliberately away from the others and the telltale launcher, toward the barracks area.

"The one fills needs," he attempted, mimicking the single-syllable, present-tense speech.

They nodded as they followed him in. "The one is in, not out," they responded in unison, as if reciting a litany—which, of course, they were.

Don't jump the gun and rush us,
Daniel prayed to the remaining four in the trees. He risked a quick glance back in the low-light mode, and saw that the launch tube had been pulled in. He nodded to himself that at least something was going right, and hoped that the others had enough restraint and confidence in him to hold off unless they were really needed.

The group showed him the communal shower, and he washed himself and Amara. He put her down and again gave her a warning look to keep silent.

"We share our goods and our needs are one," one of the group told him, and he realized that they really didn't see any difference between the two of them and themselves; none that mattered to them, anyway. He understood, too, that they were offering anything he needed.

"We need not," he responded carefully, afraid that even his syntax might give him away. They were friendly and harmless now because it hadn't occurred to them that he wasn't a part of their new world. He didn't know how long this hospitality would last if he slipped up and they realized what sort of visitors they actually had here.

"We must be on our way," he told them. "There is need for us in a new place."

They understood that, too, and wished them well. He and Amara started to walk off through the mud-soaked field toward the darkness and safety of the trees.

They felt the group's eyes on them, but they didn't look back, walking purposefully on, anxious that suddenly one of the group would say something that would louse everything up.

But they didn't. The two guerrillas reached the safety of the woods.

Amara suddenly breathed a tremendous sigh of relief and almost sank to the ground. He caught her, supported her for a second.

"I thought that was it," she managed at last.

He nodded. "That sort of thing we could do without," he agreed. "But now we know what's become of the people of Ondine, and what the Machists plan for everybody."

A bit further in they met the other four, who welcomed them in hushed but excited tones.

"We were going to plug them if they made any move toward you," one woman said. "Geez! You both got nerve!"

Amara smiled. "I couldn't breathe, even, around them! It's so strange! And—to think that they were like us only months ago!"

That was the thought in everybody's mind.

"The bastards," said a man. "I'll kill a hundred of them for that. One of them creatures coulda been one of my wives, or business partners."

"I know it's grim," Daniel said, "but it's not like they'd just exterminated them all. They seemed at peace, even happy. They're not suffering anymore, at least."

"I been to a psych-tank once," the angry man responded. "Most of them was happy, too. Don't matter if they kill your body or your mind. It's all the same. Now we know. They wiped out the people of Ondine and left their corpses running around."