Dancers in the Afterglow (21 page)

And, probably, that was why he was still around in this body. The simplest programing for a ground fight or guard function would be to sensitize them only to lifeforms. That way they never shot each other, could pick out the target from among their own number.

They'd reacted to his firing at them, of course, but the moment he'd stopped he'd ceased to exist for them.

"Foggy? You still there?" he called.

"Yeah, Captain," came the response. "But I think they're gettin' tired of playin' games. We seem to be up against something they don't want blasted, but
they're comin' in slow but sure. I don't know how much longer we can hold 'em off."

"Keep trying," he urged them. "I'm coming to you as quickly as I can."

He sighed, and gambled. The pad explosions had collapsed and dislodged the terminal wrecked earlier, and large blocks were strewn all over. Pistols at the ready, he descended boldly into the dark, then crossed to the street where a particularly large, jagged section of terminal superstructure lay across the road.

He was right, he saw with satisfaction. As long as he walked normally, and didn't get too close to any of them, they ignored him.

A minute more and he was around the piece. He glanced down the street for a moment, and saw, way at the other end, someone on a stretcher being loaded into a small van carry registration number B-31.

Amora!
They wouldn't bother for a symb. He looked in the direction of the pads; the one still intact stood out starkly among the rubble and continuing explosion flares from the others.

And he took note of the dead bodies of the team, sliced up like so much raw meat, blood all over. He looked back down the road. The van was moving off now, toward the city.

At that moment the hailing frequency opened on board his egg. There was an incoming message. "Daniel, this is a Priority Order Change from Admiral Hudkins," said a voice. "You are to abort, repeat, abort the spaceport destruction," it told him. It sounded so distant, so cold. "Try and keep the pads intact," it ordered, echoing hollowly through him. "NX analyzed your reports on the captured people and decided to move. We are at this moment in combat for Ondine. Hold on, Daniel! We're coming!"

He looked in the direction of the disappearing van, now lost in the dark. Amara. They had Amara.

And then he looked back at the pads. He could sense the energy bursts from Foggy's people, see dead bodies, twenty, thirty of them, lying about. Dark shapes,
perhaps half a dozen of them, crept on narrow beams toward Foggy's position.

"Too late," he murmured, anger rising in him, clouding everything but the memory of the disappearing van and the sight of the dead bodies. "Too damned bloody late!" he snarled, and ran for the pad.

In space, the golden egg shifted in its orbit, moved slightly, and deployed silvery wings to the full, soaking up the light He felt the energy as it was transferred, beamed to him on the ground, the full energy and resources of the ship and its great computer flowing into the single symb.

He reached the base of the beam on which the soldiers were creeping toward Foggy's position, and grabbed the support, The soldiers spotted him, but were thrown off balance as he grabbed a thick support strut and pulled, twisted it like so much cardboard, lifted it up, and flung it to one side. The beam collapsed, crushing two of the soldiers. Four others were damaged to one degree or another, and he picked them off easily, then whirled to pick off several latecomers.

Then he jumped on top of the rubble, crouched and sprang, landing almost at Foggy's position, over twenty meters distant It was a totally nonhuman act beyond the power of even an ordinary symb. When he landed with tremendous force, the three rebels whirled and almost picked off their own leader.

Foggy stared at where the Combine agent had landed. The concrete was cracked and chipped, and strips of skin were dangling bloodlessly from the captain's feet and lower calves.

"Jesus!" someone exclaimed. "I always
thought
she wasn't human!"

"Never mind!" he snarled. "Get the hell out of here! Give me the torpedo launcher and scram! I'll take it from here!"

They didn't argue, but scrambled hastily over the rubble, shooting at dark figures as they ran.

Daniel looked around at the mass of bodies illuminated in the spaceport's eerie light
.

"It's not your spaceport anymore," he told a Naval Command that did not hear it. "It's not your goddamned spaceport anymore!" He looked at the bloody dead. "It's
theirs."

He judged the distance and angle of fire from where the bodies lay. Satisfied, computer checked and scanned, he ran onto the open tarmac.

The soldiers were slow to react; they were momentarily fooled by their basic programming. But, once they were able visually to see that the symb was not one of theirs and was carrying a torpedo launcher, they started firing.

The computer that was Daniel threaded a path through the crossfire at a speed almost too fast for the eye to follow, running right at Pad Two. On the run, Daniel raised the tube and pressed the firing stud.

The torpedo plunged into the base of the mushroom as Machist beams sliced him to pieces. When the pad blew, it took all of them with it.

Polyphony

UNLIKE THE DEAD AND DYING, DANIEL WENT ON. HE
registered and activated the polyform around one of his four unused symbs. He used his standard male shape for time's sake, but left it neuter. No sense in wasting time on realism. He was launching it toward Lamarine even as he was reporting on the raids, and on the total destruction of the pads.

The navy was understandably upset; but couldn't do anything about it except be philosophical. The fighting was rough; even though they had gambled in taking a major ship of the line from each defense zone, the Machists were putting up a hell of a fight They wouldn't retreat; you had to knock them out completely.

He understood this even as the shuttle tube impacted in the water just off the beach at Lamarine, inflated, and popped up to the surface.

The Machists were symbs. They were
all
symbs. But they were basic ones, not remotes like him. Somehow they had to be periodically renewed.

Somewhere, he knew, was the source of the symb pattern. Somewhere, in Lamarine, there was probably no more than one, but certainly one, real live Machist.

He swam to shore quickly, considering the fact that he didn't know what a real live Machist looked like.

Or what it was, even. Would he know one when he saw it?

He was suddenly seized with self-doubt. Suppose a real Machist looked like the soldiers, just as his own symb looked like the original him? How could he know the real one?

No, he decided. The Machist would definitely be nonhuman. Those soldiers and the teacher dolls—the Ponders—were just models to make them seem more familiar to their prisoners.

But how did all those symbs get here? he still wondered. And how were they programed?

He didn't know, but he wanted to find out.

He felt certain that the Machist would be near Amara. For some reason they'd tried hard to take prisoners. The Machist leader wanted live ones if possible. Why?

If
he
got one, Amara or not, it would be the hospital they'd use. He walked up the beach determinedly.

There was nobody about. Symbs didn't swim, of course, or enjoy other luxuries of life. Probably, most of them were deactivated, wiped, stacked for shipment or destruction.

He crossed the boardwalk near the Hotel Grand Lamarine, all lit up and looking busy even from the outside.

I'll
bet
they're busy, he thought with some satisfaction. Destroying stuff they didn't want captured, mostly.

There were still mysteries here, although they were secondary to his personal concerns.

Who or what were the Machists? Why did they wage war over planets? How did they so thoroughly alienate a normal human population from its own people?

And why?

How the devil did they get three hundred and fifty thousand symbs on Ondine in a single night? How did they renew them, keep their patterns live?

And why Ondine? A planet they could never hope to hold, and which held little of any value, human or material, compared to more tempting targets.

He reached the hospital entrance. There were a large number of vans and ambulances, including two flyer ambulances, about, but no sign of their drivers. He looked over the vans carefully, remembering the big number he'd spied on the back of the one that sped away.

And there it was. Van B-31, an Ondinian van that had serviced the hospital before the arrival of the Machists.

He looked in, saw two soldiers and a Ponder. The two soldiers were obviously guards and well armed; the Ponder was working some sort of computer console in what used to be the reception area.

The windows said nothing; the rooms were all lit; stretches of blank wall hinted at the labs.

And no ledges.

He eyed the windows. They were about eight meters apart in straight up-and-down rows, and they had a small sill, perhaps fifteen centimeters. He walked to a middle row, gauged it, and jumped, reaching the second window, uncertainly clinging to the sill by his fingers.

He hoisted himself up, examined the room, a typical hospital ward. It was empty. He started to break the transparent material of the window, when he noticed a shadow within. He ducked back down, peeking just in the window.

A soldier entered, leading five others, blank-faced, linked by a slender rope. As Daniel watched, they were gently but forcefully pushed to the floor. The soldier nodded in satisfaction, then left.

They were "thin" symbs, Daniel knew. Their imprinted personality had faded, and they were mindless automatons. Still, he decided not to risk entering this room. They might still have a little flash of reaction, and he'd rather not have to fight. He eyed the next sill, then carefully pulled himself up on it. He looked nervously at the symbs, but they seemed oblivious.

He judged distance, wind, atmospheric resistance, and the like, and made the leap. He almost missed it, grabbing the third-floor window with just four fingers of his right hand. Slowly he gained balance, and grip, and looked in.

The room was empty. He waited a few minutes to see if anyone would pass the door, but nobody did, and there were no shadows or noises. He decided to risk entry, applied power, and hit the window hard. It flexed, then gave, dropping loudly on the floor. It did not break, though. He waited a bit until he was satisfied that no one had heard, then hauled himself in. He went over to the open door and cautiously peered out. The hall seemed to be empty.

Slowly, cautiously, quietly, he started down the hall.

He'd only progressed halfway, finding all the rooms deserted, when the hospital P.A. barked to life.

"Not that way, Captain Daniel," the voice of a kindly old man echoed down the corridors. He froze, then turned. There was still no one in sight. He walked back up the other way.

"Nor that way, either, Captain," came the hollow voice again. "You'll never find her without help. Why don't you come up and talk with us? Use the lift about twenty meters further on. Come to the fourth-floor executive offices. We'll be waiting."

It was the Machist. He knew that, deep down. He'd been expected!

"Why should I trust you?" he called out to the walls, his own voice echoing slightly down the corridor.

"You shouldn't," replied the ghostly voice. "But, then again, what have you to lose? You're not really here, anyway—and we have the girl."

He sighed. The damned creature was right! If they knew where he was, they could zap him at will. And there was no risk to him—as the man said, he wasn't really here.

He walked over to the lift, and it opened for him automatically, as if it'd been waiting for him. It was empty, and he stepped in and pressed 4.

It irritated him that they seemed to know so much more about him than he knew about them.

The door opened in a few seconds, revealing an office complex. There was an empty reception desk, a blank wall, and a corridor off to the left. A partition and single door stood to the right. The sign on the door said:
HOSPITAL DIRECTOR.

He turned right, opened the door, and walked in.

As befitted a top executive, it was a large, spacious office dominated by a huge desk and two chairs facing it. Behind the desk was a Ponder.

The Machist smiled broadly.

"Come in! Come in!" he invited. "We know it's silly, but sit down! You don't know how much we've looked forward to this little chat!"

He went over and took the seat, although it meant little to him. Force of habit.

"You're not the director of this little project," Daniel said softly. "You're just another symb."

The old man shrugged. "True, this is not our true form, but you'll meet us personally sooner or later, we promise you. Anyway, we're not talking to the real you, either, are we? We assure you the simile is apt; this particular vessel is an exact symb, unlike the programed, simple tools you have heretofore encountered."

"Where is she?" the Combine man asked coldly.

Ponder sighed. "Safe, we assure you. Alive, yes. Awaiting disposition instructions from you, really."

"Why you—" Daniel exclaimed angrily, and started to move to leap across the desk.

Ponder threw up his hands. "Wait a minute! What would it gain you to destroy a symb?"

Daniel froze. "Satisfaction," he snarled.

Ponder shrugged. "If you like, we can arrange for you to destroy a hundred thousand Ponders. We don't need them anymore."

The cold remark both appalled him and calmed him. He sat back down in the chair.