At that moment I reached out to her and touched her \va, effortlessly weaving a mild demand spell. She gave a sharp cry and stood up. I had to give a slight paralyzing stroke to her legs to keep her from involuntarily bolting. I had to be dramatic while being careful not to juggle mass, since this was to be a strictly temporary spell—but that was all right. The wa took days, even weeks, to complete a physical change, whereas the perception of that change was immediate.
She watched as her hands and arms shriveled, changed, became a mottled green and brown, then larger and heavier as they turned into perfectly repulsive suckered tentacles that, to her, weighed half a ton. “Nor she screamed.
“Want a mirror to see the rest of you?” I taunted, feeling less than wonderful about all this but realizing its need. Korman said she would break only under extreme pressure, and this was certainly that.
“No! No! Nor she wailed. “Kira!l Please help me! Kira! Kira!”
I suddenly felt a little better. So she did know! I watched and waited to see what would happen next.
Korman had told me that I would one day perceive the wa as he did—and I was well past that point The two forebrains of Zala Embuay showed clearly, not just as two brains but as two distinct and particularly weird ones. From the odd, distorted wa sense they looked about equal, each smaller than the norm for a human. If a person had the Power, you could see the information flow from wa to wa. Zala didn’t—but somebody did. Somebody, in fact, abruptly started doing the nearly impossible.
The message flares, terribly strong, flowed from the brain to the body and back again, measuring, checking the spell which showed as a spider’s web of wa energy, then unraveling it in the same manner as I had unraveled Darva’s spell and my own. Whoever was doing it—and it had to be Zala herself—was a stronger sore than the spell, which was, of course, a simple one but still a level VI or VII. I began to wonder if this mind might be more powerful than my own, and reflected that I just might have to find out. One thing was clear—not only was the mind powerful, it was extremely well trained. When? And by whom?
I made no effort to defend the spell and it broke easily, restoring Zala quickly to her former appearance. Very briefly I saw a vision of that stronger, Amazon like Zala of those last moments on the streets of Bourget. But the vision was fleeting and quickly gone. Kira, it appeared, was still not quite willing to meet me face to face.
Zala sat down, looking weak and shaken. I did not intend to let her get off that easily.
“Zala, who is Kira?” I asked her.
She just shook her head and wouldn’t look at me directly.
“She’s inside you, isn’t she?” I pressed. “Kira and you share the same body, don’t you? And that’s why you’re here, on Charon—because of Kira, isn’t that right? Zala, what is Kira?”
She put her hands to her ears, trying to block out my voice, but it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Kira, if you can hear me, understand me, you’d better put in an appearance,” I said sharply. “Your spells are good, but that was a minor one for me and I’m hardly the most powerful sore here. Any attempt to disable that laser by spell will be instantly detected and it will fire. Wa takes time to weave. I don’t think anybody can beat the speed of light. You’ll sit here until you come out, Kira. Sit here without food, without water, in a plain and empty room in a place in the desert from which there’s no escape.”
Zala’s head turned and looked at the laser-camera combination, but she made no attempt at it. Finally she turned to me. “Damn you! Who the hell are you, anyway?’
I smiled. “Why, Zala, honey, it’s your old loving husband, dear old Park, in his new suit of changeling clothes. Remember me?”
That got her, more than the threats or anything. “Park?” she managed weakly. “Is that really—you?”
I bowed slightly. “It’s me, all right. And if it’s any consolation, you were blown from the beginning. Korman actually assigned me to keep close to you and report. He thought you were a new kind of Confederacy assassin. Your rather unique mind shines like a beacon to all who can see the wa, I’m afraid.”
She gasped. I could tell that this was genuine news to her—and to her counterpart too, I suspected. The fact is, self-control or not, we never accurately see ourselves in wa terms. Wa doesn’t reflect in mirrors.
“What I’m telling you is all on the level,” I assured her. “Koril’s had a small team trying to figure out the unique part of your brain almost from the moment you arrived. There’s been some debate on the science and security staffs about you. They’ve let you run, so far, to see what would happen—and nothing did. So we’re making it happen. Now, don’t you think it’s time the truth comes out? If you’re working for Morah, you might as well admit it and go from there. If you’re working for anybody else, we want to know. And if you’re not working for anybody, we want to know just what the hell this is all about.”
She shook her head, as if to clear it. “I—oh, hell. What’s the use of going on any further? I’m going to tell you—unless I’m stopped.”
“By Kira.”
She nodded. “By Kira.”
“Zala, what is Kira?”
“She—she’s my sister. What I told you—you really are Park?—at the start was mostly true. I was an experiment. We were. A whole different kind of brain, they said. Two of us. Two complete people in one body. It’s really funny saying that, ’cause I don’t really know what it’s like not to have it.”
I shook my head in wonder. “But why? What was the purpose? What was the aim? Surely somebody didn’t take this kind of chance just to experiment? It wouldn’t be worth the risk.”
She chuckled dryly. “The risk. What risk? You have too high an opinion of the Confederacy, Park. That’s your trouble. You see only what’s on top, out there for show, and you swallow it whole, just like most of the jerks. You think the Four Lords just sit here and run then* little worlds? Just because they’re trapped here? That’s a laugh. They run a lot you don’t see all over the Confederacy. They’re just the new examples of what’s been around for thousands of years—maybe forever. A business. A business that sells things that nobody else does. Things that people say they don’t want, but they really do: perversions, gambling outside the official casinos, special loans, even promotions. Fancy jewels, works of art, stuff like that is stolen or bought and a lot of it comes here, to the Diamond. They’re everywhere and into everything. Drugs for bored frontier folk and space-navy people who might be out for a year or more. Anything you want they can get—anywhere—at a price.”
“I’m not as naive as you think,” I told her. “But go on. This syndicate, then, bred you?”
She nodded. “Bred me—and others.”
That was interesting. “Others? Many others?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? We were raised independently.”
“Yeah—but why? For what purpose?”
“The Confederacy has an elite force, bred to their jobs. They’re called assassins, although they don’t often kill. Did you know that?”
“I know something about them, yes,” I admitted rather evasively.
“Well, bow do you think the Four Lords got stuck here? Or most of the rest of the people, for that matter? They—the assassins—got them. The assassins are bred for the job, as I said, so they’re almost impossible to corrupt. They love their work, and do nothing else. Their true identities aren’t even known to the bureaus that employ them, and any time one is contacted, that contact is brief. After the job is done, all memory of them is wiped from even Security’s minds and general records. Their anonymity is the one thing the Four Lords have never broken. Those men and women are the only people the high-ranking members of the Brethren, as the organization usually calls itself, are scared of. The only ones. Only one has ever been exposed and corrupted—and he’s one of the Four Lords!”