Implied Spaces (27 page)

He looked at Lin. “I’m cold,” he said. “Can I get up?”

“If you’re ready.” It was the technician who spoke.

He rose, rubbed himself with a towel although by now he was perfectly dry, and dressed in simple clothing that the clinic had manufactured for him based on his physical template.

“There was blood in the cockpit,” Lin said, as Aristide slipped on his shoes. “Your blood, in fact.”

Aristide looked dubious. “While Daljit and I might have had a fight over something, I very much doubt she went after me with a cleaver.”

“
Again
,” said Bitsy.

“No,” Aristide corrected. “The first time was a kitchen knife.”

“The bodies will tell, when we get them,” said Lin.

“Where’s Daljit?” Aristide asked.

“Down the hall,” said Bitsy. “Being reassembled.”

“I’d like to see her.”

“Sergeant Brady and I will have to see her first,” Lin said. “She’d backed herself up just that morning; perhaps she’ll be able to tell us…” He shrugged.

Aristide grinned. “You think she’ll confess homicidal intent?”

Lin made an equivocal gesture. “I doubt it very much, but I’m afraid it’s necessary we follow procedure.”

Aristide found himself in a familiar waiting room scented with antiseptic and flowers, sitting on a chair while he let Bitsy bring him up-to-date on current events. While he listened, he treasured his secret glow, his knowledge of his own clandestine purpose.

When Daljit finally appeared, Aristide rose and kissed her, and in the soft touch of her lips and the glow in her eyes he knew that she loved him almost as much as she loved Vindex.

He was the same person, with the same personality. The difference was simply that now he had been
ennobled
. Before he had lived for his own selfish, foolish reasons; and now he lived for something great, something wonderful and perfect.

On that first day it was some hours before he and Daljit could be alone. When they were finally together in her apartment, they came together with an urgency that Aristide had never felt with anyone else. He loved her not simply for herself, but for the knowledge that she loved Vindex. He removed her clothing, touching, licking, sniffing for the traces of Vindex that he knew were there. When they coupled, she whispered “
Vindex victorious
” in his ear, and the words produced a prolonged ecstasy that left him breathless, without speech.

Too excited to sleep, they paced through the apartment and found it too confining. They then went to the rooftop garden of the tall building, where they could see the great city spread out below them in a golden glow. There they coupled again in an ecstasy of love for Vindex, and only then did weariness touch their minds.

In the morning they shared a breakfast on the balcony, and Aristide looked out at the world below and saw it, and himself, anew.

The gusting wind brought the scent of coffee to his nostrils. He took his cup and sipped and looked out over the waking city.

“I’m struck by how sad I have been,” he said, “and for so long.”

“Really? You didn’t seem that way to me.”

“I’ve lived a long life—longer than practically anyone. I’ve seen so much, forgotten so much. I had to create poetry in order to help me remember things.” He looked at her. “I remember the lines I wrote about you better than I remember
you
.”

She was amused. “I had no idea I was so forgettable.”

“It wasn’t you.” His gaze brooded over the city. “It was me. I accomplished wonderful things in my first century, and then less and less as time went on. I abandoned my old career because the Eleven were so much better at it than I was, and I replaced it with an Arabian Nights costume drama. Eight hundred years of martial arts training led to nothing. A series of relationships with women, all without passion, all ended amiably.”

He turned to her, his gaze afire. “It has taken Vindex to remind me of what I am capable. I have worked wonders, and I can work them again—but this time for our Master.”

Daljit put down her coffee cup and leaned forward to whisper into his ear.

“
Vindex victorious
.”

A thrill ran along his nerves. He stroked her arm.

“I am so in love,” he said.

He began his work for Vindex. With Daljit’s friends he shared his knowledge of the meetings of the Standing Committee, of the work that had been done on the army. He told them that the United Powers were planning an invasion of Courtland.

What was done with the information was unclear. Aristide only knew that it was passed on beyond Daljit’s circle. He thrilled to the idea that it would somehow reach Vindex, that Vindex would recognize Aristide’s devotion.

In theory it wouldn’t be hard to send messages to Vindex. You’d have to get out into space with a communications laser and aim it at Courtland, which was more than intelligent enough to read photon-pulses on its skin.

It would be harder for messages to go the other way without being detected. No one among the Venger’s agents in Myriad City claimed to have received their Master’s orders, but then it was scarcely necessary. The Venger’s agents were intelligent people: they knew what to do.

Aristide continued to attend meetings of the Standing Committee when it was discussing matters within his sphere, and he began to undergo military training—in simulation only, as the actual hardware had not yet been built. Not only was he able to pass on military information through Daljit and her friends, but within the growing army he made many new friends among those who had been killed in the zombie plague, all of whom were now devoted to the cause of Vindex.

He consulted with Daljit and the others about how to present himself to the Venger’s unenlightened foes. The decision was made to keep Bitsy. People expected to see him with the black-and-white cat, and they would think it odd if Bitsy were to disappear from his life—and more to the point, Endora would think it odd as well. But since Daljit had already been well established as someone who didn’t care for Bitsy’s company, Aristide was able to keep Bitsy away from his meetings with Daljit and her friends, and do so without raising suspicion.

Commissar Lin, however, troubled him.

“We’ve found the bodies,” Lin said two days after Aristide’s resurrection. He gazed mildly over the bow of the Standing Committee’s floating headquarters, his wide-set eyes encompassing the horizon.

“You were tangled together—in one another’s arms. You’d received a blow on the head, but beyond some superficial scrapes Daljit suffered no physical injury.”

Aristide affected to consider this. “So I hit my head and fell in,” he said, “and I dragged Daljit in after me when she tried to help.”

“That’s a likely scenario,” Lin said. He turned to Aristide. “The boat tells us it was heeled far over on a reach, so you could have overbalanced. And the sun switched on around that point, so you might have been dazzled and taken a misstep.”

“Well then,” Aristide said. “I suppose that solves the mystery.”

“We can’t rule out anything,” Lin said. “But in the absence of any other evidence, there’s no reason to continue the investigation.”

“Since you’re no longer digging into our lives,” Aristide said, “perhaps you’d care to join us for dinner one night.”

Lin smiled. “Thank you very much. I accept with pleasure.”

“We should kill Lin,” Aristide told Daljit that evening, as they dined on her terrace. “He makes me uneasy—he’s simply too intelligent and too good at his job.”

“The acting head of the Domus on Topaz,” Daljit said,”would be a perfect recruit.”

“But he’s got guards now. It won’t be easy.”

“Depends on the guards. Are any of them… our friends?”

“Ah. Perhaps they are.”

Their smiles mirrored one another. In silence and perfect accord, they reached across the table to take one another’s hands.

Plans for Lin’s assassination began to unfold just as Aristide’s military training began in earnest, in a new-built facility called Camp Ashoka. In addition to learning vast amounts of technical information, actual drill was involved—physical conditioning as well as the traditional close-order marching. During operations, soldiers would be able to survive and fight only so long as their bodies held out, and conditioning was judged essential. Even though the recruits’ bodies were in very good shape to start with—few people incarnated themselves in bodies that were poorly conditioned—and even though the conditioning sessions were aided by drugs and nanomachines, the drill sessions still left Aristide exhausted by the end of the day.

In addition, the drill sessions were conducted by the traditional loud-voiced, bullying, randomly violent drill instructors, almost all recruited from less advanced worlds like Midgarth, New Qom, and the Other New Jerusalem, places where wars were either recent or ongoing. In order for the recruits to understand war, it was felt that they should first have war made on
them
, and survive with intelligence and spirit intact. Besides, shared misery was judged essential to creating comradeship and unit cohesion.

These were all techniques that had proven themselves through the centuries. It had been decided to save innovation for a war less crucial to the fate of humanity.

Even though Aristide understood perfectly well the psychological conditioning being employed on him, he was grudgingly forced to admit that it worked. Even the fact that he was secretly a member of another army altogether didn’t prevent him from developing pride in his unit and his own accomplishments.

At least Aristide would have the consolation of being an officer. The ordinary fighters of the army would be machines, and even the lowest-ranking human would probably have hundreds of machine warriors under his command. And as for the humans, all would be part of the fighting force. The support and logistical tail would be composed entirely of robots.

In the meantime Aristide quietly rejoiced at the news from the war. Vindex had deployed more and more positron beams on and near Courtland, and continued to riddle the Loyal Ten with matter-rending fire. The United Powers finally constructed pocket universes dedicated entirely to the production of energy and antimatter, and began to deploy their own antiproton cannon. These usually managed a few shots before being pinpointed and destroyed by rebel fire. Vindex was more than holding his own.

The United Powers was now creating antimatter and beam weapons at an accelerated rate, to deploy them all at once, in large numbers, and level the fighting field. Aristide was serene. He felt certain that Vindex had anticipated this plan, and would be able to counter it.

One night, tired after a day of drills and exercises, Aristide found himself approached by a broad, pale-skinned biped with golden eyes.

“Hail, traveler,” the stranger said.

Aristide looked at him in surprise. “Hail, Captain Grax.”

Grax sketched a salute. “Officer Candidate Grax, these days.”

Aristide considered the troll, who now topped him by bare centimeters.

“Your dimension seems to have shrunk along with your rank.”

The troll’s yellow teeth flashed. “I had to fit your damned battle suits, didn’t I?”

Aristide smiled. “What a shame. Beforehand you cut such a towering figure.”

“It’s worth it if I can take a crack at the enemy, and for that I seem to need some of these technology larks you people have.”

“Do you wish you’d had them in Midgarth?”

The troll’s funnel-shaped ears twitched. “If you ask me, they make it all too easy.”

“True, but I think that’s the point.”

Grax shuffled uneasily. “They tell me that when the enemy cracked open my head and filled it with his poison, it was you that saved me.”

Aristide bowed, and concealed his mixed feelings with a gracious smile.

“It was my privilege to do so,” he said, and let Grax take him to the Cadets’ Club, where the troll groused about the quality of the beer.

Aristide was only rarely able to visit Myriad City during his training, and then only because the Standing Committee requested his advice. When possible he tried to spend at least part of the night with Daljit, and give her as much information about the armed forces as he could. In return she kept him informed of the plot to kill Commissar Lin.

Three agents of Vindex were found in Personal Protection, the unit of the Domus that provided bodyguards for important officials. Unfortunately they were low-ranking, and couldn’t assign themselves to Lin exclusively. They would have to wait for their names to come up in the rotation.

Nor could the bodyguards perform the assassination themselves—their parts would be too clear in the matter, and they’d be caught and the existence of the Venger’s secret army revealed. The best that could be hoped is that they would contrive to be distracted during the actual attack.

The place of the assassination was another difficulty. With so much of Topaz under direct or indirect surveillance by Endora, it would be difficult to find anywhere where the assassins wouldn’t be observed, or where their trail couldn’t be picked up. It was impossible simply to tell Endora not to look, as had been done during the assassination of Tumusok. Endora was now the enemy.

“A pity we can’t just drop a piano on him,” Aristide muttered.

“Perhaps we will,” Daljit said in answer.

During the deliberations of the War Subcommittee, Aristide had his greatest triumph. Soldiers in the field would be required to be sealed not only against shot and shell, but against biological, chemical, and nanological attack. Conceivably they would have to survive in their armored suits for days, and several plans had been put forward for helping the soldiers overcome this inconvenience.

Various attachments for purposes of nourishment and sanitation were put forward, and Aristide strongly supported the plan that would require soldiers to have their bodies modified to make machine-enabled nutrition and elimination more efficient.

Thanks in part to Aristide’s support, the plan was put into operation.

Every single soldier would have to visit a pool of life to have his body reconstructed to fit their combat suits.