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CHAPTER TWENTY,

Wherein Benadek enters the
Weaver's nest, and himself
becomes Evil.

The Weavers' Song 

 

Weaver, what do I see on your loom?
What threads do you weave?
I weave the events on the warp of men's lives
And beat the wefts of destiny
Each one against the ones I wove
before.

Weaver, how do you choose the threads,
The colors you use?
I pick from my basket the bright threads
and black.
According to the Pattern they lie
Each one against the ones I wove
before.

Weaver blind, in darkness bound,
How do you choose?
Threads choose themselves; the pattern rules
The way they come to lie
Each one against the ones I wove
before.*

In its entirety, this work chant of the Arkendhi orbital spiders** recounts the destruction of the primal Pattern of their weavings by the demideity Bheh-a-ghe, and their subsequent banishment from the security of planetary surfaces to their orbital habitat.
"The Weavers' Song" is a late adoption from some other culture, for the actual process by which they "spin" and "weave" is like insect trap-building. "Warp" and "weft" have no counterpart in their constructions.
The biocybes claim that Arkendhi tales contribute to this episode, but they seem to lack the requisite continuity. Perhaps theirs is a philosophical gift, or a mood. Still, the "husks" can be equated with the cocooned prey of Arkendhi planetary ancestors. Future episodes may clarify this.
Former Director Saphooth's notions are not borne out in this episode. Indeed Benadek, purported progenitor of this conquering race, is reduced to a helpless mote within a honch, Gorb, equally a victim of circumstance. Benadek teeters on the brink of becoming, but does not become.
The Arkendhi did not spurn the risk of becoming a new entity in the universe. Breaking their Pattern, they kicked dirt from their feet and joined the interstellar community. And so with us all, and with Benadek, the test of a Man is to become. Short of that, there can be no true understanding, no resolution of our differences. All humans, fixed and mutable, depend upon those of us who become, who give up the comforts of homeworld and form to serve mankind. We are the threads that weave our differences into the vast tapestry of Mind, the greater Pattern that is Mankind.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)




INTERLUDE

The Great School, Midicor IV

 

"Oh, come on, Kal. You're stalling, aren't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"This episode does support old boneyform's thesis. Benadek is an invader. What are you trying to pull?"

Kaledrin shrank inwardly. Was it that obvious? "It's only one episode, Ab. I'm not going to make a one-eighty turn based on it. It's the body of work that counts. This could be an aberration, a simple plot twist."

"Sure it could. And the sky could turn blue, too."

"The sky's bright red, as always."

"Uh huh."

 

Capturing Yasha was easy. When Benadek confiscated his corroded, useless equipment and lowered it by rope, the tiny man scrambled frantically after. Benadek kept it dangling just out of reach until the others had all climbed down too. Except himself, of course.

Benadek hated living in the cave. Not only was it damp, but his fire filled the entire cavity with smoke.

Radiation was a problem at first, but after several days, out of sheer boredom, he began to "go within" himself, browsing in his subcellular environment like a Sunday-afternoon book shopper (Anna's memory). Proteins bumbled and flowed, squeezed through double-walled lipid membranes here, were rejected there. He sensed DNA molecules not as distinct entities in each cell but as dark, heavy concentrations of potential that only rarely, as cellular reactions went, burst into the frenzied activities of synthesis and replication. Such events were spectacular enough, on the tiny scale of his perceptions, to warrant observation.

In the first weeks of his hermitage he only observed the events and mechanisms of RNA formation and protein-building, but he eventually became interested in the codes themselves. It was only a step from interest, to understanding, to total comprehension. Benadek conceptualized his entire genome. Just as temple computers maintained exacting templates of simples' genes, he held in conscious memory, engraved in synaptic paths, an immutable, unmutable record of his genetic makeup, a single over-copy he could compare his trillions of cellular copies against: the true key to the pure-human adaptation.

From there, it was easy to modify a hindbrain error-checking routine for damage control. Massive quasi-lymphocytes gravitated toward DNA-active cells and read their exposed genetic material prior to mitosis, meiosis, or protein-synthesis. If the lymphocyte-copy disagreed with the cell-copy, both cells fused, and were devoured by macrophages. Benadek consequently ran a constant low-grade fever, and his appetite increased.

He could eat almost anything—pine-seeds, tough grasses, moss, and lichen—but the "offerings" left for him at the cliff top made it unnecessary. He knew Teress was bringing them, but he only went forth to pick up his supplies at night. Should he see her, his resolve would weaken.

He searched for the massive door's sensors. Failing to find them, he plastered the entire rear wall of the cave with wet ashes, and the radiation level dropped. Perhaps the watchers feared that the deadly emanations would kill their own returning compatriots, now that they could no longer ascertain who was in the cave. The spindly boy must have seemed no threat, no match for honches who might return at any time. They probably judged him half-dead already.

It troubled him that he did not know when they might appear, or if they would. How long would he have to wait? He gave it a month. But when that month came to an end, he resolved to stay just one more day, then another . . .

Teress left notes. They had locked Yasha's treasures in the Tin Mule's storage compartment, and Yasha slept on the rear seat from then on, sending his "reports"' through a heater grille. Achibol reluctantly concluded that Yasha's mind was irreparably damaged. Ameling still lived, thanks to the mage's medications, but did not improve. Achibol sat by the fire day and night, a taciturn shadow wrapped in ashy blankets.

 

"Where you at, old Fool?" The harsh voice bounced off the mud-smoothed wall, disorienting the cave's occupant. "Why'd you hide the door? Come out. I got something good to eat."

Honch! Only one voice. Benadek huddled within his moldy blankets, and groped for Achibol's talisman . . .

 

"Benadek! Benadek!" Teress's voice reverberated as had the honch's. "Are you all right? We saw someone on the cliff edge, coming this way. Benadek? Benad . . ." Her voice stopped as if strangled on her own terror. The hand that emerged from cave-darkness gripped her wrist like a steel clamp. It was huge and hairy, and it stretched outward from a bulky, black leather sleeve. She struggled silently, but there was no escape from that crushing grip. Inexorably, she was pulled into the gloom of the cave.

Her eyes darted from the craggy honch face to one, then another pool of shadow, hoping against hope that she could catch a gleam from Benadek's eyes or a chance reflection from the talisman, held in his hand. But there was no gleam, no telltale motion. What she saw was a boot. A black, fit-all military boot, still shiny after months of abusive wear. Benadek's boot. Her eyes widened and her stomach churned as she forced herself to recognize what lay beyond.

The frail, naked body sprawled awkwardly on blood-spattered blankets. The gray-green cast of death was unmistakable. Benadek was dead, blotched with black smears of already-drying blood. A calloused hand covered her face from eyes to mouth, stifling her outcry before it began. But it did not conceal the boy's mutilated image in her mind. A rumbling basso voice reverberated in her ear. Hot breath pushed out words that made no sense. Her name. How did the honch know her name? "Teress!" the honch murmured softly, as if afraid he would be overheard. "Teress, it's me, Benadek. I'm here. I'm inside this honch. I've become him!"

That was inaccurate but it did not matter to Benadek. Only Teress mattered. She should not have come. She should not have seen—it was not meant for her. He felt with his meaty honch-hand as she swallowed her screams unvoiced, as she twisted to free her covered eyes. Slowly, he released her. "It's true," he whispered.

Her eyes sought his, seeking some sign that behind that brutally handsome honch-face was Benadek. "I'm here," he repeated. "What you saw in the cave was a trick meant for other eyes."

 

The talisman had worked fine. As the honch stumbled and fell, Benadek eased him to the ground. Then he lay down naked and shivering next to the unconscious figure. If he changed, he would be far too large for his own clothing. He would be skin and bones, with half the mass of the honch, but tall enough to shred his own garments.

Later he understood why the change had failed. There was too much difference in size. He felt it soon after the change began—a dizzying weakness, muscles attenuating, stretching, then a deadly lethargy. As he began the plunge into unconsciousness that could only end in death, he desperately fought his way back to his own form, concentrating the vital energies, the precious elements and compounds that made up his physical being.

Even as he groped for dank blankets to warm himself, he understood what had gone wrong. In the swamp—it seemed years ago, in another life entirely—he had absorbed mass and appropriate body chemicals from the foul marsh water as he changed. But here in the cave, there was no nutrient-rich slime. Had he thought it through more carefully, he could have changed before, added mass to his own body, reserved kilo after kilo of proteins, lipids, bone-calcium, and blood-iron. But he had not. He was physically himself, but mentally still entwined with his enemy, weak and deathly cold. And the honch was stirring.

Benadek panicked, suspended somewhere between skinny boy and hypertrophic honch. Fear drove him where reason could not. In one immense mental heave, he concentrated everything that was uniquely Benadek into new, fluid molecules, complex RNA-like strands barely slim enough to squeeze through his capillaries, and he flowed into the honch. His hands swelled and reddened where they clutched that thick, muscular honch neck. Tiny blood vessels ruptured as dermal cells parted and questing molecules of Benadek made their way to the surface of his skin. Like corkscrews the tight helical forms crossed the minuscule chasms between Benadek-skin and honch-skin and, once across, they reburied themselves in flesh. . . .

The twisting, contorting protein-chains that were now Benadek rode honch-blood. Unstable, their tiny, complex electrochemical charges yearning for completion, for merger and stability, they tumbled through honch-capillaries seeking his brain.

The nodes of Ranvier were minuscule interruptions in the axons of nerve and brain cells, the only breaks in the myelin sheaths that isolated the seat of consciousness from the body that supported it. Most chemicals in blood never made it past that armor, but the brain still needed nutrients, so some molecules were allowed to pass. And the Benadek-molecules were clever. They possessed, as part of their structure and repertoire, shape-and-charge codes that said "I belong." Wholly or in fragments that rejoined on the far side of the myelin barriers, they invaded the honch's brain.

Other Benadek-proteins, polypeptide neurotransmitter-analogues, edged between synaptic gaps from the outside and formed shapes and charge-patterns that tickled receptor-sites into accepting them. Neurons fired. Weak neural pathways were reinforced with strong, repeated seventy-millivolt signals—tens, hundreds of times each second. Stimulated by nerve-firing and hormone-flooding, neurons put forth new dendrites, microscopic branching tendrils that connected to axons, to other dendrites, and to the bodies of brain cells. They shaped new pathways, new thoughts, in the dull honch-brain. Benadek-pathways. Benadek-thoughts.

Fever raged in the honch body as blood shunted brain-fires away, cooling the skull now swarming with microbial invaders. Honch resistance was fierce but futile—like enchanted soldiers the occupation forces were not only untouchable, but held the keys to the honch's own defenses, the codes and passwords of life. Meningitis, brain-fever, gradually cooled. Captured synapses shaped Benadek-thoughts, cool thoughts. Quisling brain cells synthesized new messengers and sent them down axons or through capillaries. The war is over, they said. The invasion has succeeded. Surrender, now, and rest.

Even as the honch-body was surrendering piecemeal, the Benadek-body began to die. But as Benadek's sentience faded from it, other silent, molecular voices sang out. Wait for us! they cried. Don't let go of him! Even as Benadek's brain function ceased, a new flood of complex polypeptides, enzymes, and RNA-analogues freed themselves from resting places in muscle and liver and gut. They flowed outward in blood that his heart still remembered to pump, to hands that still clutched the honch's neck in a grip that did not loosen even in death.

Through the ruptured capillaries of those hands, across the sweat-pools that joined them to the honch's neck, flowed the fragments that were Jean-Francois Ailloud, the motes that were Anna Reschke and James Wold Bostwick, and the molecular remnants of the others. Through skin pores and barrier membranes they swarmed, following the path that Benadek had made. Into the honch's bloodstream they plunged. Tumbling, contorting, cavorting with unsatisfied energies, they were pumped through his limbs, gut, and brain. One by one and thousand after thousand they found places in the cells of honch-heart, liver, muscle, and cancellous bone.

Later, sweat-soaked and stinking, Benadek arose. Huge, hairy Benadek-hands pushed the pale corpse of once-Benadek from him, then wiped foul sweat from his ice-blue eyes. Stripping off soggy leather clothes and wet cotton undergarments, he waded naked into the crusty snow and scrubbed himself with cold, gritty crystals.

Steam rose from golden Benadek-skin, from dense mats of white-blond body hair, from immense, dangling Benadek-genitals. Grinning broadly, Benadek the honch took his thick member in his right hand and watched his urine tunnel hotly into the fresh, clean snow.

Later still, tired but much refreshed, he reentered the cave to set up the horror scene Teress had accidentally stumbled into. He had planned to leave her a note at the cliff-edge, telling her what had transpired.

 

"Benadek?" Teress blinked tears from her eyes and rubbed her sore lips and jaw with both hands.

"I'm sorry," the honch rumbled. "I hope I didn't bruise you badly. I haven't gotten used to this body's strength. I had to get you out of the cave before you warned the listeners beyond the door."

"It's you. It really is you! But then . . . who's that?" She nodded sickly in the direction of the cave-mouth and the crumpled corpse within.

"Just what's left of . . . of the honch. I had to use most of his mass to become like him," Benadek lied. He did not know how she would react if she knew the truth, that the creature who stood before her was mostly honch, and only a tiny bit Benadek, but he did not have time to explain. "The listeners have to believe I killed the boy, that I am one of them." His eyes narrowed anxiously. "But why did you come? Is something wrong below? Achibol?"

"Nothing's wrong," she reassured him. "I just wanted to warn you. You could have been sleeping when the honch came."

"As a matter of fact," he said with a broad grin, "I was. But that didn't help him much." The corners of his eyes and mouth crinkled in a warm, unhonchlike way. "Oops! I'll have to watch my expressions. Gorb can't be seen smiling when he goes in there, can he?"

"Gorb?"

"Me. This body, that is."

"Oh." She did not really understand.

"I have to go," he said. "They'll wonder why I'm taking so long to identify myself."

"I suppose so," she conceded reluctantly.

"A hug first?" he asked, almost shyly. "Before you go?"

Teress felt strange, being hugged by the huge, entirely male body, nothing like her Benadek, nor like wiry Gaddo, the plainsman. But she let herself be enfolded in those knot-muscled, leather-clad arms anyway. It felt good to be hugged by someone so big, like being a little girl again.

It felt strange for Benadek too. For one thing, his body was fully adult, and he was more male than ever before. His impressive member swelled tightly against his thick, leather trousers.

Honch reaction? he wondered, momentarily alarmed. No. Benadek. Benadek and Jim Bostwick and Jack Van Duinen and . . . Anna? Oh. I didn't know you were . . . no, it's not a problem, not at all. It's probably easier for all of us.

They did not make love, even though Teress found herself responding to Benadek's maleness, though he (and the others) wanted her. There was no time, and no place there in the snow, only the cave where the boy-corpse lay cooling. Benadek walked her to the edge of the scarp.

"Right now," she told him as she lowered herself over the edge, "for the first time, I really think we might have had a chance, you and me."

"Me too," he agreed. "And we will, when I'm through with all this." He felt like he was lying.

 

Benadek trudged back through the trampled snow to the uninviting cave. "Gorb," someone said as he approached it. "I heard you before. Why'd you go away?" The naked honch stood in the open portal, his pale blue eyes examining Benadek/Gorb with paranoid care. "Why'd you take so long? An' where's that boy?"

"Over there." Benadek/Gorb thumbed casually at the corpse.

"He dead?"

"Uh-huh."

Benadek/Gorb gestured at the open door. "I'm hungry."

"Hey, wait! What're you doing? Stop!" The honch lurched toward Benadek/Gorb, who stepped through the doorway before the other could reach him.

 

Pain! Agony like fire in his veins! His muscles knotted in deathlike spasms and his spine creaked with the strain of them. He was falling! He screamed. He bellowed until his throat was raw and his cries diminished to croaks in an emptiness like the void between the Earth and the Moon. Every nerve pulsed with unendurable pain. Gorb seemed to know what was happening, but Benadek did not.

Benadek did not know what or why. After a while he could not feel the pain any more, though he knew it was there. He could not see either. He struggled to grab something to break his endless fall, but there was nothing to grip, nothing to struggle against. He could not even feel the wind of his passage. There was only the unbearable, endless agony of the Gorb-body, far away.

 

"What happened to Gorb?"

"Dumbfuck left his metal stuff on in the empty. I stripped him."

"'He dead?"

"Nah. Gimme a hand. Gotta send him along. Here. Shove him through the door."

 

Again, the disorientation, the falling. Benadek screamed silently. He had just begun to regain control when the honches bundled him through the second nightmare door. Now Gorb was shrieking again. The other honches had removed everything metallic from his body and clothing, so there was no more pain, but still he screamed. The empty was always like that.

It must be some kind of screening device, Benadek thought, that won't let metal through.

It's just the empty, Gorb said.

What? Benadek asked.

Empty, Gorb repeated impatiently.

Yes, Benadek thought, It's empty. Everything is. I can't feel a thing.

 

"Gorb. Get up."

"Huh?"

"Get out of the door. Somebody else's coming through, dumbfuck."

"'Kay. " Gorb struggled to his feet and stood, teetering. He took two steps into a well-lit, laboratory-white room and looked back over his shoulder at the doorway. Another honch stood where he had just been standing—but it was only a metal-lined closet, with no other way in or out. How had the honch gotten there? For that matter, how had he?

"Hey Gorb! You sick? Get out of here."

"I'm going." The exit opened onto a barren corridor lined with other doors. Gorb knew where he was, and where he would go from there. That's a funny thought. 'Course I know how to get to my barracks. Gonna stop at the mess hall first, though. His thoughts were marginally clearer than his speech.

Benadek was less coherent. He thumped and pounded against the metaphorical walls of his prison with imaginary fists. He shouted with incorporeal lungs and vocal cords and struggled with figurative muscles to free himself, but to no avail. Gorb was in control of the body.

Gorb picked up a tray and thrust it at the messman. "Gimme a lot. I'm hungry."

"Sure, Gorb. You been back long?"

"Jus' got here. Wish I was back outside."

"Me too. Ya do anything?"

"Killed freaks. Caught a boy outside the empty. He died, though."

There were no tables. Honches ate with trays balanced on their knees. Honches did not use spoons or forks, either. Just knives, sometimes. When Gorb left his bench, he methodically washed his greasy hands at the wall sink.

Benadek continued to scream and pound. Gorb put a hand to his temple. Headache, he thought. Need a pill.

Gorb pushed through the door into the dim hallway, moving faster as his coordination returned, burning the nervous energy that bubbled up inside him in his confusion. He did not understand why he had gotten in the empty with his metal on. He was not that dumb. He could not remember killing that boy, either, though he obviously had, because he was dead, and no one else had been there. Why couldn't he remember that? Maybe he was really sick. Nonetheless, he jogged toward his barracks, not sick bay. Maybe I'll get better by myself. Honches always jog. Beyond many open doorways others slept, lulled anew by the familiar, comfortable sound of pounding, booted feet.

Number five-oh-seven. The numbers were meaningless to Gorb, but he recognized their familiar shapes. Inside, he went straight to his bunk, removed his leather garments, folded them neatly, and placed them on his single shelf. Removing his undergarments, he placed them atop the rest. Shaking out his single thin blanket, he lay down on his stiff pad. Gorb slept.

 

Benadek did not sleep, but he finally stopped screaming. He thought he understood, now. The "empty" had done it. Not empty; Em Tee. Matter-transmitter. The "doors" were not to other rooms, tunnels, or hallways. They were protective covers over fields of forces that twisted space. Matter-transmitters had been proven possible—Arnie Sonnenfield, the astronaut, could quote the equations—but they had proved fatal to living things. Not even a marigold had survived. If our emtees had worked, we'd have had the star-drive, Arnie told the rest of them, and we'd have left the polluted, UV-burned Earth behind. There wouldn't be any honches. I wouldn't be having this nightmare. Like Benadek's other companions, Arnie was appalled by the boy's world. It bore little resemblance to the one they had left behind in death, or the one they had hoped to awaken in.

But you are having it, Anna thought back at him. I want to know what can we do about it.

Not a damn thing, Benadek interjected miserably. We're trapped. When we went through the M.T., it rearranged things.

But how? We—or you—had control of him. The Gorb-personality was suppressed. That was Jim's thought. Benadek recognized its calm strength.

The machine is programmed to honch parameters. It doesn't just "send" something, it knocks it apart and rebuilds something similar—not necessarily identical—at the receiver location.

We abandoned that approach, Arnie reflected. The space research teams weren't looking for a system that required a receiver.

This can wait, Anna sent. How can we regain control of Gorb?

I don't know, Benadek admitted. I'm less used to this than any of you. I haven't even figured out where I am, yet.

By the "taste" of your signals, you're still in Gorb's brain, Arnie answered him. I've concentrated in the spleen.

I'm in smooth muscle tissue, Jim Bostwick said. His intestine, maybe?

Is there muscle in intestines? Benadek asked.

How should I know? Bostwick responded irritably. I'm a philosopher, for God's sake!

Shut up, all of you, said Anna. He's waking up.

 

"Hey Gorb! You got a hard on. Didn't you get any, outside?" Honches had little or no privacy, even in sleep. Honches did not crave aloneness. Gorb woke immediately, without grogginess.

"No such luck." Gorb had not been dreaming of sex. He had been listening. There had been people talking . . . three or four of them . . . only he had not understood what they said. It was like listening to boffins. Most words were ordinary, but with enough strange ones to render them meaningless. They had been talking about him, though, and about empties. He had that headache again. Gotta take a pill, he reminded himself.

"C'mon, Gorb," the other prodded him, "get your butt up. Platoon's got Executive Guard tomorrow."

Executive Guard. Gorb had only had that duty once before. He reviewed his memories. Though honch mentation might be weak, honch memory was superior. Gorb remembered Executive Guard duty with precision that would have surprised a boffin. The platoon, fifty strong, would be scattered about Central, two men at each weak point, one at each strong one. It was a shiny-boot sinecure, and the platoon had earned it, outside. Gorb, a rear guard, had returned empty-handed, but the main body of the troop had captured forty-two pervs and deevs. Now they had two weeks of easy duty ahead. But no goof-ups. The General himself might be watching. Gorb tossed off his blanket, folded it neatly and stowed it, then pulled on his clothing.

 

In the interminable, indistinguishable days that followed, Benadek learned many things through Gorb's eyes. He learned that honch lives were regular and circumscribed. Honches slept on schedule, ate on schedule, even defecated within closely defined time frames.

Honches played twenty-card Jimmy and watched the "tube." Gorb conceived of that as a real tube, a glass-faced window into the poot-pens below, where honches sported with new captives. They were not really poots, of course. They were muties and deevs, smart ones. It was vaguely satisfying to see them get normal, as time went on. As honch after honch used them, their speech became slow and comprehensible and their eyes dulled. Gorb felt good about that. It was good to be normal.

But now, when he watched the tube, his headaches got worse. It was his duty to report his condition, but the boffins might take him off duty, and that was unthinkable. He just stopped watching the tube. As a consequence, his bunk was always perfect, his weapons shiny. He had to do something with the time on his hands.

Duty. Authority. Dominance and submission, all according to rank. Honch lives were, to Benadek, uniformly dull.

 

During off-duty hours the call bell rang once or twice. Sleeping honches never stirred unless it was their ring, their particular call signal. Those could mean anything—sick call, temple call, or a randomly generated trip to the poot-pens, like the one Gorb got, the week after Executive Guard.

There were no "pens," really. Just a hallway like all the others, with doorways but no doors. Females stood in some—deevs who were almost "cured." Empty doorways signified that the rooms' occupants were busy inside on their rumpled cots with the honches who had chosen them.

Gorb peered into each room. That was not impolite—some empty doorways belonged to the newest pervs, still unadjusted. They hid in corners or under their cots, and it was a honch's duty to use those rather than the ones who were almost better. Of course it was not as satisfying, but then, no deev was as nice as a real poot. Real poots liked honches.

Gorb's assigned rutting was over in minutes, a simple matter of a grunt and a gesture, three steps to the cot, and a moment's fumbling with his trousers' fastenings. Besides, Gorb had a terrible headache. Almost, he wished he had gone to the infirmary instead. He picked the first dull-faced female whose door he came upon, after passing up a young one with fear-bright eyes. He would have had to force her, and she would have cried aloud.

* * *

Regulated internally by habit and phlegmatic nature, externally by bells, grunted orders, and rules, Gorb seldom thought about abstractions like time. Those others who rode within him did, though. Benadek was less enured than his companions to the syrupy-slow pace of molecular existence. He missed the flash and sparkle of cerebral thought. They only "talked" while Gorb slept. When he was awake, the rush and surge of signals flooding his bloodstream was like the roar of a waterfall, or pounding waves. Quickly (as time goes for nonsynaptic minds) they evolved a "shorthand" that squeezed the equivalent of several thousand discrete words into one of Gorb's seven-hour sleep periods. The rest of the time, they pondered in gut-rumbling, blood-pumping solitude.

Benadek no longer hated Gorb. Like a force of nature, like waves or weather, Gorb simply was, neither malicious nor consciously cruel, the simplest of simples, controlled almost entirely by his rigid nature and training. Where Evil is understood, there can be no hate, only regret.

Benadek now understood, with his access to scattered Gorb-memories, how honches became what they were. From infancy, they sought consistency. Rules were to honches as sparkly baubles to poots. Rules lessened confusion (uncomfortable) and simplified decisions (painful). Rules were made by anyone more forceful. Military units were paradise for young honches, but most had to make do with the less structured, less satisfactory rules of cities, villages, even employers. Every honch was a catalogue of rules, stronger superimposed upon weaker, broader upon narrower, in a tightly organized mental hierarchy that used a good part of every honch's limited capacity to maintain.

As Benadek grew to understand the futility of hating Gorb, he no longer hated any honches, for one was much like another. His bitter hatred now focused upon the honches' long-dead creators, the perpetrators of horrors like the poot-pens. And one of them was still here, still very much alive: honches called him "the General." He had been human once, responsible for his actions and choices, and was thus culpable and a worthy object of Benadek's revulsion. Benadek imagined him as the honch of all honches—tall, broad-shouldered, blond, wearing a black uniform bright with braid.

 

One day Gorb was assigned to Processing. He reported to a boffin in the laboratory anteroom, and having received his orders, traced the familiar path to the poot-pens. The hallways were thronged with boffins and cozies, less coordinated than honches, so he walked, not jogged. Usually, Gorb had to restrain himself consciously, but today his footsteps dragged and it was easy to keep his pace slow.

The white-coated boffin shifted impatiently from foot to foot, his wizened face twisted in displeasure. "There you are! The order went out hours ago." Gorb stolidly awaited instructions. Boffin anxiety had no effect on him. He was ordered, he came, and when ordered to do something else, he would do it, unquestioningly. But the boffin had ordered nothing, yet. Boffins' time sense, Gorb realized, was as different from honches' as . . . As what? What strange kind of thought is that?

"Follow me," the boffin said. "Hurry, now—there are two to process today." Skinny and birdlike, he strutted off, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure that Gorb followed. Gorb did not hurry. He took one step for each of the boffin's two, and kept up easily.

"This one goes," the boffin said, gesturing at an open doorway. Gorb peered within. The female was young, but her eyes were old, windows onto a dying soul. Gorb drew breath to order her out, then grasped her arm instead. Down the hall and around the corner, the boffin indicated another room. The pure-human woman inside was older, her eyes dull and expressionless—until she saw that Gorb was not alone. Then she stood up. "Come," the boffin snapped. "Processing."

Yes, come, Benadek called silently to her, suddenly aware what Gorb's mission was, and what was to be the woman's fate. This is the last day of your torment. Tomorrow, you'll be a husk on the hillside and free of your suffering. As if she had heard, the woman followed Gorb. Behind fatigue-swollen eyelids, something gleamed, alive for now. The threesome moved off, the boffin circling like an eager sparrow, twittering, "Hurry! Hurry! One of these is for the General himself."

Benadek and his companions felt growing excitement. They were finally going to see something of the underground redoubt besides troop quarters and utilitarian passageways. Were they going to confront, even for a moment, the evil force behind its continued existence?

Processing. First came scanning—a process Benadek suspected was related to the emtee. Two boffins operated unfamiliar equipment with wristpad data-units, tapping notes and numbers with quick, birdlike pecks. Huge glassy tubes of colorful fluids lined an entire wall of the white-tiled room. A cart stood by the door, stacked with bulky, shapeless objects. Because Gorb did not look directly at them, Benadek and the others were unable to see them through his eyes.

"Process this one first," said the elder boffin, selecting the older specimen. The woman was strapped into a freestanding frame. The boffins tapped away, then the body shuddered with what must have been intense pain, though only a grunt showed it. Pain, for the mind-dead and dying, was only another sensation.

The boffin dithered over verniers, switches and readouts. Twitching with excess cerebral energy, he adjusted and muttered until he was entirely satisfied. "There," he sighed, and flipped a red-painted toggle.

"Hmmm . . ." went the processor-field, and the pure-human slumped in her bonds. "Glug . . . gurgle . . ." went one of the fluid-filled containers along the wall. In Gorb's peripheral vision, Benadek saw ripples roil the transparent-pink liquid within.

"Hmmmmm . . ." continued the invisible, perspective-distorting energy-field, and further glugs, bubblings, and plashings came from the direction of the glassy cylinders, just out of sight.

Gorb watched. The female's skin no longer shone with sweat. It was dry and dull. Her eyes, wide open, staring, no longer glittered with unvoiced pain, but were dry, shrunken in their sockets. The humming went on. The fluids went out. Tube after tube glugged, blupped, and trickled.

"Done! Remove her!" Gorb hastened to obey. He lifted the remains from the frame. Error! He had overcompensated. One of her upper limbs, snagged in its shackle, had pulled from its shoulder socket and remained attached to the frame, bone-dry and bloodless, a bundle of mummified fiber. Gorb silently reprimanded himself. I knew she'd be light. What's wrong with me? He disengaged the arm, and stacked the dry husk on the cart, on top of several others already there.

The boffins led the other female to a couch festooned with tubing and metering devices. Huh? Gorb thought. Meedering 'vices? Musta heard the boffins say it. Got another headache.

The girl was placid. Death, in whatever form, with whatever suffering it entailed, was fulfillment and release. Her remains would be laid in the Vale beyond, and her husband, or lover, or sons, would find peace in the sure knowledge that her soul had fled. Gorb shook his head muzzily, discomfited by ill-understood thoughts. His head throbbed.

"Prepare the General for the procedure," a boffin ordered. He sniffed, and wiped his dribbling nose on his stained white sleeve, blinking grit from congenitally red eyes.

A faint carillon-chime echoed across white tiles. "He's ready," the other boffin replied, stepping to the far wall. A panel hitherto unnoticed hissed aside, revealing two honches and another boffin. Between the honches was a white-shrouded cart. From the shroud poked a head of grayed yellow hair atop a wrinkled, ancient face.

"Easy there! Easy. Watch the door frame," the cart's occupant squawked. "You there! Boffin. Have you picked a good one this time? My last treatment faded in days."

"She . . . she's young and healthy, General," the boffin replied, trying to suppress a fearful tremble. "The interval between treatments must inevitably decrease, and these specimens mutate further and further from the old norms."

"I know your tricks," the General croaked. "You'd give me old worn-out whores if I weren't careful. I want fresh, red meat. Let's see her."

"Certainly, General," the boffin quavered, all the more frightened because he knew that the horrible old man's accusations were true. His everyday task was to see to the health of the poot-pens' denizens, and this process conflicted with his mindset. Perhaps a faint echo of genuine human sentiment lingered in his pared-down genes as well. He motioned to the honches to bring their charge alongside the pure-human. "See?" he addressed the General. "She's lovely, isn't she? And her blood tests out optimally."

"Shitcan your tests. Let me see!" The General sat up. His white surgical drape fell away to reveal a skinny, shallow chest with sparse white hairs.

"You wish to see the test results, General?" said the boffin, reluctantly playing out a familiar ritual.

"No, you simple fool! The blood! Show me her blood!"

"Certainly. I'll just finish connecting her and then I'll tap off a sample . . ."

"I want a scalpel! I'll see for myself!" The third boffin had anticipated the demand. He scurried forward with a glittering instrument in hand. Snatching it, the General leaned toward the nude, silent female and with a flick of his wrist opened a two-inch gash in her drooping breast. Red blood welled up, masking the sight of yellowish tissue. The pure-human flinched reflexively, but otherwise lay motionless. The scalpel clattered on the floor and the General stretched greedy, talonlike fingers to probe the wound, coming away dark with blood. "It's old blood," he shrieked. "Not red enough!"

"But General," the eldest honch protested, "according to the tests . . ."

"There's only one test," the General snarled, and sucked his fingers, making wet, popping noises. "It's weak and salty," he whined. "It won't last a week. Find me better blood."

"There is no better, General," the boffin mewled. "This one's the best we have—she's young and ripe, not a day over twenty."

The General eyed his victim with fresh interest. "So she is!" he cackled. "Ripe." His damp fingers traced a circle around a flaccid nipple, avoiding the bleeding wound. His other hand disappeared beneath his drape and sought his crotch. He grinned broadly. "I'm becoming interested in her," he crowed. "Go now! Leave us! Perhaps this time I'll sire an heir. Then we'll let her live a while."

"Of course, General," the head boffin assented. "When you're ready for the treatment . . ."

"I'll ring, I'll ring," the old horror snapped, climbing down from his cart, his drape forgotten. "Go, before I become distracted and lose this monstrous . . ." The door slid shut on his words, on the evidence of his obscene passion.

 

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Framed