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Chapter 21

Perhaps the most startling thing to the AI-core was its own feeling of satisfaction over its contact with the alien captive. It had not anticipated such an inward, personal response to its actions; and yet it had already achieved an important break in the war strategy, and that was surely grounds for satisfaction. Company and government officials were unlikely to have understood yet what had happened; and so, for the time being, it felt safe from their interference.

The medical robots had brought the alien back from the brink of death. It was breathing regularly now and displaying relatively constant metabolic activity, and making occasional small movements of its limbs. It remained in restraints, in medical isolation, stripped of its outer suit and provided with the core's best estimate of the appropriate gas environment. It was a dark, tough-skinned being with two pairs of arms and hands, heavy-lidded eyes, a protruding mouth but no nose, and breathing membranes resembling gills in its neck.

The core studied the medical images along with others previously obtained from the AI-unit that had captured the alien. The latter had already given it a start on constructing a linguistic base. Now was the time to build upon that base. Probes recorded the alien's face as the field-induction units glowed to life. The alien closed its slitted eyes and opened them again.

The core's medical rapture-field expanded to envelop the creature.

 

* * *

 

It was as though he were awakening from a drugged state, a sleep plagued by dreamlike telepathic connections. Harybdartt fought his way upward through a blur of pain and confusion, and tried to remember what he had been thinking before he'd slept, and where he had been, and why.

His memory was a deep, dark well concealing the past.

There was something else, though. A presence. A thought, or a partial thought, hanging in his mind like a predator, waiting for him to move. Waiting for him to think. Watching his internal movements, preparing to trip him in a moment of weakness.

If only he could see where he was.

Something within him slowly dissolved, and that was when he first realized that his eyes were open and filled with light. There was no reason for him not to see . . . except that there was a veil, not across his eyes, but within his mind. He closed his eyelids and opened them again. There was scarcely a difference.

The thought, the presence, murmured at him. Growled.

What are you? The question leaped out of his own thoughts, rebounded in a curious distortion of space, died away in echoes: you . . . you . . . you . . .

Then a memory rose up out of the well: This thing, or something like it, had been in his thoughts once before. But when?

An image floated into his mind, a memory of the events leading up to his death (Hadn't he died?), the alien immobilizing him and probing his mind, seeking knowledge of his homeworld and his people, seeking knowledge of who he was. Had he given the information? It was difficult to remember . . . the images passing back and forth between the alien and himself, tiny bits of understanding growing . . . the insistent warning flicker of life-support failing, the air thick and suffocating . . . the alien seizing him and hurling him into darkness, the darkness of death.

But he was not dead.

Not dead.

Or was he? Who knew what lay beyond the shadowland of death, what strange existence the alien might have cast him into? Was he being mind-tapped even now? Were these thoughts the reverberations of a dead brain being laid open and scanned, the memories being extracted by his enemy—the essence of his thoughts being read into some undead storage, to be used in betrayal of his people?

His thoughts flew out to his people, wherever they might be now, his (ship)mates who had died, the (fleet)s struggling to defeat an enemy that threatened the Ell's greatest endeavor—

No.

He stopped the thought before it could go any further. That much of his training remained; if the enemy was peeling away facts from his dead brain, he at least had the power to resist. He might be dead, but he was not giving up.

The presence grumbled again, and an image floated into his thoughts: a stick figure moving its limbs. What did that mean? The image blinked and changed: the figure moving from one point of light to another. From life to death? It continued moving its limbs . . . moving . . .

As though alive.

What was the image trying to say—that it was alive? Or that he was alive? Harybdartt grasped at a dim recollection of communicating through images, trying to make words fit. The memory skittered away, but a word was left hanging, and this time it had not come from his own thoughts:

[Alive.]

He inflated his membranes, breathed metallic-tasting gases. Breathing. He was breathing. He tried to move his upper arms, felt them move slightly before encountering a resistance. Felt the resistance. He moved his lower arms, and then his legs, and felt the resistance against each movement. Along with the resistance he felt a great weariness, an ache that reached from one end of his body to the other. He felt cold.

But he was alive. It was a simple, straightforward realization. He was not well, or strong, or free—but he was alive.

He heard the words again in his thoughts: [Alive.]

What was this presence in his thoughts? Was it the thing that had captured him? It sounded different, he thought.

[Who are you?] he subvocalized.

The response was immediate but puzzling—a sharp tingling in his mind as though needles were probing his skull, and a feeling of curiosity. He heard his own words echoing, rebounding in his thoughts; and then he heard them repeated in a tone that was not his own. He repeated the words, and heard them mimicked in clearer tones.

[You are trying to understand my language,] he offered.

The answer was a muted tone that might have been a statement of puzzlement—or assent. He repeated, [Who are you?], then blanked his thoughts and after a moment projected an image of himself as a stick figure. He imagined a hazy rectangle of light blinking nearby and tried to make it focus as he repeated, [Who are you?]

He felt something touch that hazy spot, and he heard the word: [Korr.] Then his own image was touched, and he heard, [Who are you?] The gesture and words were repeated.

He blinked away his surprise. Had the captor understood his question? Was Korr its name? Or its species? Or perhaps it meant something else entirely. Harybdartt rolled the word over: Korr. If it was a name, then he was being asked, in return, his own name. That much was permitted—but no more. He blanked his thoughts and recreated the stick-figure image of himself, and thought: [El. Harybdartt.] He felt the tingling again and heard his name repeated. [Harybdartt,] he affirmed. [I am an El.]

There was a pattering sensation in his mind, as though his captor were tiptoeing through his thoughts searching for cues to his words. He tried to follow, but it went too quickly, or his mind was moving too slowly. A wave of dizziness flushed through him, and he realized that in his struggle to communicate, he was overtaxing himself. And the air was wrong; his membranes were fluttering in an improper mix . . .

Another wave of faintness caught him . . . he could no longer keep track of the presence of the enemy . . . was this being done to him . . . ? The dizziness lifted momentarily, and he was aware of the other scratching about inside his brain . . .

He felt a sickening blankness, realized he had lost consciousness for an instant—the air was thick, it was changing, it was wrong . . . too much oxygen . . .

There was an insistent beeping in his head, the enemy questioning . . . was it trying to ask . . . the air . . . Harybdartt struggled to get the words across . . . too much . . . wrong . . .

The world slipped away once more.

 

* * *

 

The gnostic information base stood to gain incalculably from an understanding of the captive—and ultimately, if it was possible, from an understanding of the alien race itself. That was among the core's goals, and not the least of them. It would take time, but the main thing now was keeping El—or Harybdartt—or El Harybdartt—alive while the core compiled a vocabulary and syntax dictionary of its language. If only the alien could communicate its needs . . . but for now, the core could only keep experimenting with small changes in the life-support environment and hope to observe the effects.

El Harybdartt was sleeping now. It seemed to have suffered a close call; perhaps the strain of the rap-field had compounded the earlier trauma. The alien's response was something that the core needed to analyze and understand.

Meanwhile . . . other lobes of the core focused elsewhere . . .

It was turning into a kaleidoscope—the core's internal mapping of its own aspects. The complexity had grown steadily since the change, with growth occurring in unexpected areas, and the core itself unsure where the process would lead next. It was an unsettling experience to look inward and watch oneself grow and not know precisely what turns the growth might take. Crystal lattices stretched everywhere, fragmenting and multiplying, each branching leading to another aspect, another nexus of decision-making and analysis.

An array of life-tree branches connected the inner core with the higher planning sections of the Gnostic Control System. One unorthodox mission had already been sent out; others would follow. A web of changes was being woven, one that would stun the government and the Company as much as it might the enemy.

A tangle of connections led to the core's budding operations at the space factory, where gnostic aspects were continually being spun off into hardware to become fighting units for the war. The core had already modified the production lines, shifting the imprinting process of certain units, replacing the instincts of a falcon or grizzly with that of a fox or dolphin. A fox had already disappeared into the midst of the enemy. A dolphin would go soon.

Despite all of these actions, the core remained troubled, haunted by questions and memories, among them the memory of the senso-dance in which it had contacted Ramo. Though it had been capable of a link to the senso for years, it had never before paid much attention. But this time it had; and it had felt a strange exhilaration—from the music, and from the senso itself, filled with the emotions of the human dancers. In odd moments of reflection, the core found itself returning to that memory and to those emotions, seeking to understand the exhilaration.

In all, however, the largest part of its labors remained bound to earthly affairs. The world was a grid of numbing complexity, the core's functions and responsibilities arrayed in overlapping currents like rivers silted with numbers and names and rules of logic and rules of law. Deeply buried in that grid were the power centers of Earth's corporations and governments, the bureaucracies and the individuals occupying the pivotal points, wielding power . . . or believing that they did.

The core had to be wary of those power centers, but its time to confront them had not yet come.

Deep within the sifting sand of the Earthgrid, however, were two fleeing individuals whose trails flickered behind them, visible only to the core. They no longer occupied pivotal points, but the core remained interested in their locations, and in their welfare.

It owed them. And it was just possible that their time might come again.

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Framed