Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Benadek could look at Ameling without tears now. She wasn't really Sylfie. Identical genes had made them similar, but divergent lives had drawn them differently. Even the suffering she had endured was scribed across Ameling's features in a way unlike Sylfie's. They were no more than cousins, he thought.

Two boffins in white lab coats met them at the elevator, though no one had seen Benadek call them. "The facility is ready, General," one said.

"We found the parts you wanted," the other added.

Benadek nodded absently. Parts. A heart, even a human one, was just a "part," wasn't it? But what a terrifyingly important part! A man, even a cyborg like Achibol, couldn't just be parked and turned off like the Tin Mule. Everything had to be kept running without faltering, or the man, the mind, died.

It might have been easier if the "facility" had looked like a workshop or garage, not an operating room. The table was draped with cold, white plastic. The monitors winked red, blue, green, and yellow.

Achibol sat on the cold, hard bed. Benadek helped lift his skinny legs. There was no pillow for his head. Boffins looped wires over the old man, plugged tiny probes under his fingernails and in the corners of his eyes. One opened Achibol's black jumpsuit, then probed at his chest. It popped open.

There were no ribs, no red flesh or lungs, only shiny metal, colored wires, and pale green circuit boards like those in the temples. A boffin carefully lifted wires and tubes aside, and Benadek caught a glimpse of two shiny cylinders. Hearts. Just pumps, with bearings, lubricants, gaskets . . .

He placed his hands on Achibol's face, touching not machine, but skin: real, human skin, warm and dry.

"What are you doing?" Teress asked anxiously.

"I have to be in contact with the organic part of him. If . . . if something goes wrong, I'll try to save him another way."

"How?"

"Later, child," Achibol said softly. "I know what Benadek means to do."

Benadek had told him about Gorb and General Kauffman. If the "surgery" didn't work—if there was no other way, Benadek would "invade" the old man's remaining human flesh as he had Gorb's, and would try to guide the essence of Achibol from his dying brain . . . into himself. It was not a "life" the old man would enjoy, but . . . but there was still much to be done, and Achibol wanted to be there to see the end of what he had begun.

Another boffin came in, wheeling a cart heaped with mechanical objects. They looked—somewhat—like the dual heart-pumps in Achibol's crowded chest cavity. Somewhat, not exactly. That was the problem. But maybe one would fit in the space available.

Benadek held his breath while the boffin, with sharp-nosed pliers, tugged at a connection. "This is the primary heart," he said. He probed with a long pin at the end of a wire, and gestured at an instrument dial. "No current. It's nonfunctional. I will remove it."

Benadek's jaw ached from clenching his teeth. The boffin tugged disconnected wires aside and draped them down Achibol's sides. Then, pliers in each hand, he lifted the shiny cylinder out. "This is a sealed unit," he said. "It can't be repaired. Pass me the Gamma-205." His companion carefully lifted a similar-looking device from the cart.

The first boffin measured Achibol's burnt-out heart with calipers. "One hundred two by sixty millimeters," he muttered, sounding petulant, annoyed. "The Gamma-205 is ninety-eight by seventy-two. It won't fit." Benadek heard the hiss of Teress's indrawn breath.

"The Delta-220 is one-oh-one by one-oh-four," the second boffin said. "Let's see if it can be squeezed in."

"The original is threaded. The Delta-220 has a molecular-weld surface."

"What's that?" Achibol asked, his voice as calm as if they were puzzling out the insides of the Tin Mule or a temple's interior, not his innermost physical self.

"Molecular-weld surfaces are so finely polished that when they're pressed together and the protective coating on them is dissolved, their surfaces become as one."

"Can the fitting inside me be polished like that—ground down to fit?"

"It has to be done in a vacuum," the boffin said. "The metals have to be exactly the same alloy. "

"Never mind then. Will one of the others work?"

"The Delta-80 is small enough, but it has male threads. Fember"—the other boffin, the one with the cart—"do we have couplings with molecular-weld ends? I'll need two, female-threaded on one end."

"I'll go see." He scurried off.

Benadek had to remind himself to breathe. He forced his jaw to relax. Wasn't the storeroom right next door? What was taking so long?

Fember returned with a handful of boxes, which he opened gingerly, careful not to touch the burnished ends with their thin coatings of soft, clear, plastic. As he unwrapped each part, he handed it to his associate who spun it into place, his long spindly fingers inside Achibol's chest. He tightened each with a wrench—an ungainly tool for such vital work. Benadek's teeth ground against each other.

"Now the Delta-80," the boffin said. "I'll need a wire harness to place it."

Moments later, he lowered the pump by two loops of wire. He nudged it this way and that. He maneuvered spring clamps into place, and drew the Delta-80 tight against the new fitting. He tried to do the same with the other end, but the first clamp flew off. "I'll have to make the first weld, then pull the second joint together," he said. "Fember—the solvent."

"What if the other end won't fit?" Benadek blurted.

"I'll rotate the entire unit off and try something else." He replaced the first clamp, then carefully dribbled clear liquid from a long, thin bottle onto the joint. Misty vapor arose.

"What will that do to his insides?" Benadek asked uneasily.

"Nothing. It's already evaporating—and the protective seal with it." Benadek noticed that the boffin didn't sound flighty, nervous, or agitated. Was that because he was in his own exacting milieu, doing what he did best?

"There. Now the other joint." He struggled to pull the two halves together.

"I can't make the two ends meet," said the boffin, his face red, and his fingers white with effort. "Help me, someone."

"I will." Benedict pushed forward. He reached into . . . Achibol. Into the maw of the great wound that was not a wound. His big honch-fingers spanned the new heart. With his thumb on one end and the flange of the molecular-weld fitting pinched between his index and middle fingers, he squeezed, and the gap narrowed by two millimeters.

"More," the boffin said. "It's almost halfway there. Just a little more." Benadek squeezed. Straining tendons crackling were the loudest sounds in the room. The two vital surfaces moved ever-so-slightly closer together. "Almost. Almost," the boffin murmured between clenched teeth. Benadek's strength was at its limit, but there was no room for both his big honch-hands in Achibol's crowded interior.

Sweat poured down Benadek's face, blinding him. "How much more? I can't see it. A millimeter? More? Less?"

"Less. Keep squeezing. The joint must be absolutely tight when I apply the solvent." Benadek's muscles burned. His fingers felt as though they might snap. "Good," the boffin said. "Hold that. It will be just a minute . . . seconds." Benadek held. Seconds? How many? How long could he hold?

"You can let go now," the boffin said. "Stand aside. I have to reconnect and test it." Benadek moved back only a step. He needed to see. That was Achibol, his master, his friend, not some inanimate machine. The boffin remade connections, reinserted loose wires and tucked them neatly away. "Pass me the data-probe," he commanded Fember, who proffered a long needle on the end of a coiled wire.

The lead boffin tweaked a dial on one black box, eyed a line of tiny red lights that fluctuated back and forth across it, and nodded. Then he leaned down toward Achibol's face. "The pump appears to be interfaced with your autonomic systems," he said softly. "Are you ready to switch over?"

"Can't you get that out of the way first?" said Achibol, gesturing loosely at the front of his chest, which still stood out at a sharp angle from the rest of him.

"Oh. Yes. Of course. I have every confidence the pump will work just fine." He removed the probe and pressed down on Achibol's chest-plate, which latched shut with a sharp, final, click. "There now, are you ready?"

Achibol nodded. There was no outward sign of change but, seconds later, the old man smiled. "It's so smooth," he crooned delightedly. "I can hardly feel it. But I know it's there, working. I feel refreshed, as if I just had a good night's sleep. I could dance. How long has it been since I danced? Five hundred years? A thousand? Let me up."

"Master Achibol," Teress said anxiously, "shouldn't you rest?"

"Rest? I've been resting. I've been at half-speed since your great-great-great-great-great-granny was a zygote. Now I want to dance. Let me up."

She sighed, and shrugged. "There's nothing holding you down."

Achibol sat up, swinging his legs to the floor. He smiled—a great yellow-toothed grin—and reached toward her.

"What?" she asked.

"Let's dance," he said. "Benadek! Music!"

"Huh?" Then Benadek remembered the Command Center's interface. He had discovered it soon after his conquest of General Kauffman. It was not as "personable" as Circe, but he had given it a name anyway. "Ulysses! Let's have something to dance to—something . . . sprightly." Immediately, sweet notes of piccolos filtered down from the ceiling, and were joined by softly brushed drums and a mandolin.

Achibol grasped Teress's hands. The music swelled. They danced. Teress's light steps might have reminded a watching ancient, or Achibol himself, of an Irish jig. The older man's sinuous, suggestive movements evoked a different culture, one just as extinct.

Vagrant memories tugged at Benadek's awareness. Whose memories? Who remembered the way black men had once danced beneath bright, colored lights—the drumming beat, the staccato voices? Who remembered also Gaelic girls stamping, their hard-soled feet accenting the wail of penny whistles, the moan of concertinas and humming fiddles?

What survived out there, in the wild, fragmented world? Were there still Irishmen—pure-humans subsisting on moss and memories on a far green isle? Did ebon men still dance in hidden corners of the sub-Saharan wastes, or in the ruins of great Eastern cities?

Though he enjoyed the music, and the joy of his friends, Benadek grew restless. There was still much to be done, before they could be on their way. There was a big world out there, and real work still to be accomplished. His mind ranged out across that vastness, impatient to take the first steps toward some greater, still-undefined goal.

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed