The Cyber Chronicles - Book I: Queen of Arlin (22 page)

"I do not!"

"It's not that
cold. Once you're in, it's nice."

"You do not
feel the cold."

Sabre regarded
her impassively, reminding her of the cyber's blank stare, then
grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. Tassin gasped and tried to
free her wrist.

"Let me
go!"

"No, Your
Majesty, you're going to have a wash. You'll feel better for it,
otherwise you'll be complaining all day tomorrow about how tired
you are, and I'll have to put up with the smell as well as the
whining."

"Unhand me at
once!"

Sabre dragged
her towards the pool, her struggles in no way slowing him down, but
he stopped when she grabbed a sapling and hung on with all her
might. He turned back, his expression telling her that he could
easily have yanked her free, but had no wish to hurt her. Instead
he pried her fingers loose, adroitly avoiding the kicks she aimed
at his shins.

"Sabre, stop
it!"

"What are you
so worried about? Don't you primitive people ever bath? Or is it a
once a year thing?"

"I bathe every
day, but not in a freezing mountain stream!"

Sabre continued
to pull her along, stopping to unglue her from various trees. When
they drew close to the grotto, Tassin grabbed a tree and sat down.
Sabre turned and scooped her up. Tassin gasped in outrage at this
manhandling, struggled and cursed him foully in several
languages.

"If you don't
stop that, I might drop you," he commented.

"Put me down!
That is an -"

"Don't!" He
jerked to a halt. "Don't say it, or I swear I'll drown you."

Tassin huffed,
furious at his unforgivable behaviour, and embarrassed by his
proximity. Changing her tactics, she glanced at him through her
lashes.

"Are you going
to undress me as well?"

He smiled and
walked on. "If you like."

"No!" She
blushed, furious that her attempt to embarrass him had
backfired.

"Then I'll just
chuck you in with your clothes on."

"No! I will
wash!"

Sabre nodded,
and she studied him covertly, struck afresh by the placid cast of
his features. He lacked the hard, aggressive aspect that most men
had, possessing gentle eyes and a sensitive mouth. Putting her down
beside the pool, he performed a mocking bow and left.

When Tassin
returned to the campsite, Sabre was not there, but he soon
returned, carrying a wild pig. A hole burnt through its head
testified to his marksmanship, so the loss of the cyber had not
detracted from his skills, it seemed. The pig was already gutted,
and he set it on a spit over the fire to roast, noticing her
interest.

"Don't worry,
I'm just as good at what I do as the cyber. When they train cybers
to fight and shoot, they're actually training the host, as we're
called, and all the information is stored in my brain, not the
cyber's memory."

"What was it
like, being a cyber?"

He gazed at the
pig, his eyes shadowed. "Horrible. Cybers have a set of
instructions on how to care for the host body, and one of the
important ones is to keep it clean. That's all well and good, but
washing in a freezing horse trough in winter is not exactly fun.
When the cyber told you it controlled pain, it meant it didn't
allow me to react to it, not that I didn't feel it. When I stepped
out of that casket, I was in agony. If it hadn't been for the
cyber, I would've been useless for a week. And of course, when I
was wounded, that was just as bad."

He prodded the
fire, frowning. "Cybers also don't care what they eat, but they
know the host requires food and water. When I was guarding that
dear old lady, she fed me animal food, because it was cheap and
nutritious, but it didn't taste very nice. On a number of
occasions, the cyber made me do things that caused extreme pain,
and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. The cyber, of
course, doesn't really feel pain, although it knows when the host's
being damaged."

Tassin had seen
miscreants flogged and soldiers die in battle, but those agonies
had been brief, deserved or voluntary. To be unable even to vent
one's pain was something she found hard to imagine. Once she had
seen a man who had been paralysed in battle, unable to move his
arms or legs. Her father had given him a pension, and his wife had
nursed him until he died, but the frustration and rage in his eyes
had given her an idea of what it must be like to be unable to move.
To have one's body controlled by another, however, had to be the
ultimate degradation and misery.

"Those who did
this to you must be monsters. They deserve to be punished as you
were."

Sabre smiled.
"A nice thought."

His calmness
spoke volumes of pent-up anger, and she swallowed more hot words
that may goad unwanted reactions. Instead she asked, "The cyber
said that it did not need sleep, but surely you did?"

"Yes, it
allowed me to sleep; that was no problem. It just woke me very
quickly when it needed me to do something. It's a bit like having a
bucket of ice shoved down your britches, and believe me, you wake
up bloody fast. You see, the cyber can't control the host body on
its own, otherwise they'd have removed my brain. It needs the brain
to control the body, because that's far too complicated for it. It
also needs the brain to store its memories. The cyber used my brain
for its purposes, and I had no say in the matter."

Tassin
shuddered. "It must have been terrible, especially when you were a
child."

"Until they put
me in the tank, I had some control. The cyber also did, so it was
kind of a fifty-fifty relationship. When the cyber wasn't using me,
I could do things on my own, but in the tank you lose contact with
your body, and once it's gone, you never get it back."

"What do people
use cybers for?"

Sabre shrugged.
"Lots of things. Bodyguards are probably the most common
occupation, but some very rich people have cyber armies. They're
expensive, so that's rare. A lot of governments use cybers as
police, since they're incorruptible and reliable, and they don't
need to be paid or receive pensions. There are people who hire out
cybers, and they make a fortune, because when a cyber's inactive,
it can be stored in its casket for years, costing nothing in
upkeep.

"Quite often
they're hired as hunters, taken to alien planets and sent after
monstrous prey. The sportsmen watch from floaters. Of course,
they're insured, in case a host is killed." His lips twisted in a
grim parody of a smile that sent a chill through her. "If they
retrieve the cyber, they get a refund, because barrinium is
expensive. They cremate the body to reclaim it." He spoke in a
cold, distant manner as he recounted the atrocities.

"Some people
use them for fighting sports, but usually against dangerous animals
or aliens. No man can beat a cyber, and two cybers are too evenly
matched, the fight would go on until they both died of exhaustion.
They're no good as companions, as you know, they don't have much in
the way of conversational skills, and they're banned from competing
in any sports against ordinary men, like foot racing or weight
lifting."

"Has anyone
ever tried to disconnect a cyber?"

Sabre turned
the pig, watching the juices drip into the fire, spluttering and
hissing on the hot coals. "I overheard a story about a woman who
tried. It seems her cyber saved her from something terrible, at
great cost to himself, and the stupid woman fell in love with him
or something. Anyway, she took him to Myon Two and insisted that
they remove the control unit, because she wanted to reward him with
his freedom. They removed it, and he was left a vegetable, of
course."

"But that's
because it causes brain damage. What about if they just cut those
struts, where they go into your head?"

He smiled. "You
can't cut barrinium. There's something about its molecular
structure that doesn't allow it. It can be melted, so everything is
moulded and welded. When they put the barrinium cap on my head,
they welded it to the cyber band. Barrinium joins with other
materials easily, and in a process that doesn't involve heat, only
tiny amounts of electricity. But it doesn't part company easily at
all, so it's pretty well impossible to cut the struts. The entire
cap has to be removed, including the wires, which are hooked deep
into the brain, and that's what causes the brain damage."

"But if it is
so easy to melt, surely they could melt the struts and take it off
that way?"

"Apparently if
they do that, the heat of the melting cooks the brain. To join or
mould it, only a small amount of electricity is required to soften
it, but to melt through it would need a lot more power, and make it
too hot. Barrinium is a superconductor, as well as being extremely
light, tough and impervious to metal fatigue, that's why they use
it on cybers.

"The reason my
brain didn't freeze when I was lying in the snow is because the
conductivity works both ways, so my body heat prevented the cold
from penetrating. It must have cooled my brain a bit, I expect,
which would have helped to prevent swelling after the impact, and
probably saved me from brain damage. The superconductivity only
really becomes a problem when heat is involved, or if the control
unit's subjected to such intense cold that it overwhelms my body's
warmth."

Tassin shook
her head, staring into the fire. "Was it not strange for you, being
with all those other men who all looked exactly the same as
you?"

Sabre shot her
an amused glance. "Actually, I wasn't aware that I looked like
them. I knew they all looked the same, but I didn't bump into a
mirror until after I left Myon Two, and even then, the image was
blurred. It's funny how the mind refuses to accept the obvious. I
was convinced that I didn't look like all the rest. Even when I was
old enough to realise that I must look like them, I never got a
clear view of them either. It's quite a novelty, being able to see
properly."

Tassin's mouth
watered at the savoury aroma emanating from the pig. "So now you
are unique. You must be the only cyber in the world who has taken
back control of his body."

His eyes glowed
silver as he watched the flames. "In the universe. The cyber wasn't
joking, that night when it pointed to the stars. That's where Myon
Two is. It's another planet. Your friend, who loaned me to you,
must be a space traveller. Not only the gods live in the stars,
people do too."

He paused,
sighing. "It was certainly a freak accident that caused this. One
that has probably never happened before, and may never happen
again. That fall from the cliff was just far enough to crack the
crystals in the brow band, and the rock was in just the right
place. It was pure luck. If I'd hit a little harder, it might have
killed me, less hard, and it wouldn't have broken the control unit.
Somehow that crack is in just the right place to interfere with the
cyber's control circuits."

Tassin pondered
his creation in a machine. "Why did they do this to you? If they
have these fancy machines that can nurture a baby, why can they not
build a machine to fight too?"

"They've tried.
They've built great big robots that can do all sorts of things, and
certainly kill people." He noticed her confused look and explained,
"A robot is an intelligent machine, a sort of creature made of
metal. Anyway, these robots are okay against ordinary people, and
they use them for things like crowd control, fighting regular
troops, or usually, other robots. But when they come up against a
trained fighter they're useless, they simply don't have the speed
or agility. And no matter how hard they try, they can't make them
invulnerable. Even if they could, what good would that do, if they
can't defeat their opponent?

"So they
created the cyber, a machine-controlled man, the best of both
worlds. We're known as cyborgs. They had to control us with a
computer, because a cyber with the freedom to make choices would be
extremely dangerous. The very fact that he's practically invincible
is enough to make most men drunk with power."

"Are you afraid
that will happen to you?"

Sabre shot her
a look that made her wish she had not asked. "No."

Drawing the
knife from his belt, he carved a slice of meat from the pig and
handed it to her. "I think I have enough self-control not to take
advantage of my situation."

The following
morning, Tassin refused to walk another step, insisting that she
would wait for the first wagon. Sabre shrugged and smiled, then
went and squatted on a rock in the stream, trying half-heartedly to
catch fish with his hands. Tassin became so engrossed in his antics
that she almost did not hear the first wagon rolling by. When at
last she did, she dashed out onto the road and tried to flag it
down. The driver warned her off with his whip, refusing to stop,
even when she offered money.

His only
comment was, "Get lost!"

Tassin went
back to the stream, and Sabre smiled at her as she approached, his
fishing momentarily forgotten. "No luck?"

She glowered at
him. "The man was a beast. I am glad he did not stop."

"Ah, of
course." He nodded, glancing back at the stream, where silver
shadows slid through the water.

"You could stop
a wagon better than I."

Sabre chuckled,
bending to gaze into the water, his hands poised. "Oh, sure, you
want me to rush out there and hold them up at gun point? Maybe blow
them away and steal the wagon?"

She looked
thoughtful, remembering the wagoner’s arrogant dismissal of her
plea. "Would that be so difficult? You do not have to kill
them."

He laughed,
straightening to look up at her. "It's bad enough that you're on
the run from the lecherous King Torrian, now you want to be an
outlaw in this land too?"