“Nobody contacted you?”
“Yes, I was contacted. In Bourget.”
“By who?”
“Yatek Morah.”
I felt the old blood flowing again. Now we were getting somewhere.
“When was this?”
“Less than two days after we arrived.”
“Less than two days! But we were there five months before he showed himself!”
She nodded. “He instructed me in the use of the wa—while you were working mostly. He’d come almost every day at the start, then less often as the lessons became less instruction and more practice, as you should understand.”
Yeah, I sure did. “Did you ask him what all this was for?”
“I asked him if he had a mission for me. He told me that the mission would come later, that I was now only to practice.”
“And you never pressed him?”
“I do not question the orders of my superiors.” It wasn’t a brag, just a fact stated in that same fiat, emotionless tone as the rest.
“So you were still without instructions that morning at Bourget?”
“I was. I expected to be contacted, and even made an effort to contact Morah, but he brushed me aside. I am still without orders.”
“You were never in the cult?”
“No. I tried, certainly—but I was not permitted. None would even admit its existence, and it was well hidden. Of course, it was no trick to determine who was involved and where those meetings were, but since I was still learning the powers myself I had no desire to meet a superior challenge in them until I felt I was ready.”
I nodded idly, mostly to myself. It all made a crazy kind of sense, but all the pieces didn’t fit. Damn it, did Koril know, or didn’t he? And, regardless, had Korman known, at least at the start? Morah certainly had. I needed more information—and fast.
“Tell me, Kira, who do you work for now? Whose instructions will you, must you take?”
She immediately saw the point of the question. “It is not so simple on Charon, which is why I wait and live through Zala. Here, as back home, there are factions in the Brethren, but there I was clearly on one side. Here are two coequal forces, it seems to me. Matuze ousted Koril, who was one of my Lords. Matuze has control now, but may or may not maintain it. Morah has helped me, for Matuze’s faction. But realistically, I must serve Lord Koril. I am here. I have no orders, no instructions, from Morah, and I am not likely to get any. If I do not ally myself with Lord Koril against Lord Matuze, I will be killed. Logic, therefore, dictates that I serve Lord Koril. I am at his service.”
The statement was so cold and emotionless I could hardly suppress a shudder. Here was someone without any sense of morality, scruples, even loyalty. It made absolutely no difference to her who she worked for.
It was time to talk to Koril.
“You’ve seen the recording,” I said. “Any reaction?”
Koril sat back and looked thoughtful. “I vaguely remember the project,” he responded after a long pause. “Very vaguely. It was started long before I was sent here, of course. But it was never considered successful. I swear to you I thought the whole operation was shut down and abandoned years ago. And this double mind thing—hell, it’s unbelievable to me.”
He sounded sincere, and I wanted to believe him. Very much.
“Still, somebody knew,” I pointed out. “She—and others—have been working for the Brethren for years. Who knows how many and over how long? And somebody ordered it shut down. Turned her in, in fact, and arranged somehow to send her here.”
Koril seemed deep in thought and only half talking to me. “The more I think about it, the more I can see a possible scenario. The project was closed down, if I remember, because its products scared the hell out of the Four Lords—particularly their top people back home. Killing machines… What the Zala persona said rang a bell. No loyalty. No emotions. The bottom line was, no controls. Anything that—inhuman—could be used not only against the Confederacy but also against other power centers of the Brethren. Hell, it was supposedly shut down about the time I got sent here. I only got told about it when I was on the Synod by an old planetary boss who liked to reminisce.”
“But that was forty or more years ago,” I noted. “She’s not nearly two-thirds that old.”
He nodded. “And that, my friend, means that somebody has kept the thing going after it was ordered closed. Somebody who kept the secret from just about everybody except his own immediate family. It would give that person a tremendous edge.”
“She said something about the Triana family,” I said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know them, but it might be a real family and not a Brethren one. Still, you see what this means? A fifth Lord, a secret one, in the game for maybe forty years.”
“Morah. It has to be Morah.”
“I agree. And yet Morah closed down the thing and exposed at least one, maybe all, the remaining ones. Why?”
“Well, I can think of one reason,” I told him.
“Huh?”
“With organic super-robots and an alien force behind him he didn’t need them anymore. Not there, anyway.”
“Perhaps. But why did he need them here! And why, once here, didn’t he use her?”
He thought a moment. “Maybe he wasn’t ready to use her yet.”
It was my turn. “Huh?”
“Suppose there aren’t many of these—people. Suppose there are only, maybe, four of them. You remember Morah’s getaway in the square at Bourget?”
“The four-headed hydra.”
“And now Kreegan’s dead. Remember—Dumonia said it •wasn’t the assassin who got him. A fluke, he called it.” He looked straight at me. “And Morah’s seen, met with, talked with those aliens face to face.”
I finally saw where he was going. “So Korman might not have known. Or Aeolia Matuze either.”
He nodded. “The Confederacy might not be the only ones trying to knock off the Four Lords. In fact, the Confederacy might just be doing Yatek Morah a favor.
“Not Four Lords of the Diamond—but one.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Forced Decisions
“That girl—Zala or Kira or whoever she is—worries you, doesn’t she?” Darva asked.
I nodded. “Not the Zala part There’s something even likable about Zala. But ever since Korman told me about the other part of her I’ve wanted to meet that part—and now that I have, I’m not sure I should have forced it.”
“I guess I’ll never understand you,” she sighed. “You force her out, then get really unhappy about it. Why? Isn’t Kira more or less the same type as you?”
I whirled and felt my blood pressure go up. I paused a moment to try and get control of myself. I was going to make a nasty remark and strong denial, but Darva had really hit the nail on the head. Admitting that to myself calmed me down.
“All right. Yes, in a way. Never that cold, that unemotional, but, yes, she is a lot like I used to be. The way I still really think of myself. But she’s me stripped down to the least common denominator. No morality, no cause, no feelings of any sort. That’s what those biotechs managed with that two-mind technique. She’s able to shift all her emotions, morals, feelings into Zala. It gives Kira the mind of a computer, unencumbered by any traces of—well, humanity. Zala may be dumb, shallow, and not good for much, but she’s all that’s human in that body and brain. And, still, when I look at Kara, talk to her, I see—me.” I see a man I used to be, sitting up there, a third of a light-year off the Warden system, I added to myself.