He paused, snorted. “And you have to admit, it would be particularly bad for Miles.”
“Oh, yes,” Bothari-Jesek breathed agreement.
Outside, the Dendarii personnel shuttle, with Sergeant Taura piloting, lifted the first load of Duronas to Mark’s yacht in orbit. He paused to watch it rise from sight. Yes. Go, go, go. Get out of this hole, you, me, all of us clones. Forever. Go be human too, if you can. If I can.
Bothari-Jesek looked back at him and said, “They’ll insist on a physical exam, you know.”
“Yeah, they’ll see some. I can’t conceal the beatings, and God knows I can’t conceal the force-feedings—grotesque, weren’t they?”
She swallowed, and nodded. “I thought you were going to—oh, never mind.”
“Right. I told you not to look. But the longer I can avoid examination by a competent ImpSec doctor, the vaguer I can be about all the rest.”
“You have to be treated, surely.”
“Lilly Durona has done an excellent job. And by my request, the only record is in her head. I should be able to slide right by.”
“Don’t try to avoid it altogether,” Bothari-Jesek advised. “The Countess would spot that even if no one else did. And I can’t believe you don’t need … something more. Not physically.”
“Oh, Elena. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past week, it’s just how badly cross-wired I really am, down in the bottom of my brain. The worst thing I met in Ryoval’s basement was the monster in the mirror, Ryoval’s psychic mirror. My pet monster, the four-headed one. Demonstrably, worse even than Ryoval himself. Stronger. Quicker. Slyer.” He bit his tongue, aware that he was starting to say far too much, aware that he sounded like he was edging into dementia. He didn’t think he was edging into dementia. He suspected he was edging into sanity, the long way around. The hard way. “I know what I’m doing. On some level, I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“In a couple of the vids—you seemed to be fooling Ryoval with a fake split personality. Talking to yourself… ?”
“I could never have fooled Ryoval with a fake anything. He was in this trade for decades, mucking about in the bottoms of people’s brains. But my personality didn’t exactly split. More like it … inverted.” Nothing could be called split, that felt so profoundly whole. “It wasn’t something I decided to do. It was just something I did.”
She was looking at him with extreme worry. He had to laugh out loud. But the effect of his good cheer was apparently not so reassuring to her as he might have desired.
“You have to understand,” he told her. “Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes … it’s a triumph.” He hesitated. “Do you know what a black-gang is?”
Mutely, she shook her head.
“Something I picked up in a museum in London, once. Way back in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, on Earth, they used to have ships that sailed across the tops of the oceans, that were powered by steam engines. The heat for the steam engines came from great coal fires in the bellies of the ships. And they had to have these suckers down there to stoke the coal into the furnaces. Down in the filth and the heat and the sweat and the stink. The coal made them black, so they were called the black-gang. And the officers and fine ladies up above would have nothing to do with these poor grotty thugs, socially. But without them, nothing moved. Nothing burned. Nothing lived. No steam. The black-gang. Unsung heroes. Ugly lower-class fellows.”
Now she thought he was babbling for sure. The panegyric of fierce loyalty for his black gang that he wanted to sing into her ear was … probably not a good idea, just now. Yeah, and nobody loves me, Gorge whispered plaintively. You’d better get used to it.
“Never mind.” He smiled instead. “But I can tell you, Galen looks … pretty small, after Ryoval. And Ryoval, I beat. In a strange sense, I feel very free, right now. And I intend to stay that way.”
“You appear to me to be … excuse me … a little manic, right now, Mark. In Miles, this would be normal. Well, usual. But eventually, he tops out, and finally he bottoms out. I think you need to watch out for this pattern, you may share it with him.”
“Are you saying it’s a mood swing on a bungee cord?”
A short laugh puffed from her lips despite herself. “Yes.”
“I’ll beware of the perigee.”
“Hm, yes. Though it’s the apogee where everybody else has to duck and run, usually.”
“I’m also on, well, several painkillers and stimulants, right now,” he mentioned. “Or I would never have made it through the last couple of hours. I’m afraid some of them are starting to wear off.” Good. That would account to her for some of his babble, perhaps, and had the advantage of being true.
“Do you want me to get Lilly Durona?”
“No. I just want to sit here. And not move.”
“I think that might be a good idea.” Elena swung out of her chair, and picked up her helmet.
“I know what I want to be when I grow up, now, though,” he offered to her suddenly. She paused, and raised her brows.
“I want to be an ImpSec analyst. Civilian. One who doesn’t send his people to the wrong place, or five days late. Or improperly prepared. I want to sit in a cubicle all day long, surrounded by a fortress, and get it right.” He waited for her to laugh at him.
Instead, to his surprise, she nodded seriously. “Speaking as the one out on the sharp end of the ImpSec stick, I would be delighted.”
She gave him a half-salute, and turned away. He puzzled over the look in her eyes, as she descended out of sight down the lift-tube. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t fear.
Oh. So that’s what respect looks like. Oh.
I could get used to that.
As Mark had declared to Elena, he just sat for a time, staring out the window. He was going to have to move sooner or later. Maybe he could use the excuse of his broken foot to inveigle a float-chair. Lilly had promised him that her stimulants would buy him six hours of coherence, after which the metabolic bill would be delivered by hulking bio-thugs with spiked clubs, virtual repo-men for his neuro-transmitter debt. He wondered if the absurd dreamy image was the first sign of the approaching biochemical breakdown. He prayed he’d hold out at least till he was safely in the ImpSec shuttle. Oh, Brother. Carry me home.
Voices echoed up the lift tube. Miles appeared, with a Durona trailing along after him. He was skeletally thin and ghostly pale, in his Durona-issued grey suit. The two of them seemed to be on some kind of growth-reciprocal. If he could magically transfer all the kilos Ryoval had foisted on him the last week directly to Miles, they would both look much better, Mark decided. But if he kept growing fatter, would Miles attenuate altogether, and vanish? Unsettling vision. It’s the drugs, boy, it’s the drugs.
“Oh, good,” said Miles, “Elena said you were still up here.” With the cheerful air of a magician presenting a particularly good trick, he urged the young woman to step forward. “Do you recognize her?”
“It’s a Durona, Miles,” said Mark, in a gentle, weary tone. “I’m going to see them in my dreams.” He paused. “Is this a trick question?” Then he sat up, shocked by recognition. You could tell clones apart—”It’s her!”