“... is to be executed by disintegrator—his Doom to be carried out immediately.” Evidently this superannuated god liked bare decisions better than any pretty verbal frills of justification that might be attached to them—the old master had no more to say. With a flick of two fingers he called in the bailiffs from the shadows of the balconies and then waited, wearing a long face as he did so. Somehow it was distasteful for him to be personally involved in... murder? But his face showed that he was not thinking of it as murder. As... cleansing?
The boot-clack of the bailiffs came up behind Eron. A lesser Pscholar on the far end of the rostrum raised his aerochair above the others. He was old, too. He seemed frustrated by the bluntness of the sentence—perhaps preferring a more flowery prelude to execution. “Jars.. ” he began his plea. But the spokesman-judge lifted his hand in a staying motion and the protest went silent. The offending chair sank back to the common level.
Three bailiffs took their prisoner from behind, their arms replacing the damping-field which had been keeping Eron viscously in place.
Jars. The thrust of a second recognition elated Eron. It seemed more important to be able to attach a name to this face than to have been sentenced to death. Jars Hanis, of course. A First Ranking psychohistorian. Rector. Had he remembered more than the name? How could a final appeal be made to this man? And in a hurry!
The name had the confusing ring of solid friend and mentor—but lately... did enemy fit? How could old Jars be his enemy? Struggle as Eron might, the name brought up no real memories of conflict, no rationale for the present situation, only bewilderment. Another damn hole in his mind, information he must once have off-loaded into his fam. Or accessed via a fam index.
When he tried to compose an appeal, no coherent statement formed in his mind.
The bailiffs stripped him of his robes and advanced him up the stairs onto die elaborately carved podium. He offered no resistance. They were armed with neuronic whips; he could go willingly or go paralyzed. He stared implacably at his scourger, with half an eye on the disintegrator. A young Pscholar was supposed to die with dignity, but, at the moment, Eron Osa couldn’t even remember what dignity meant.
First Rank psychohistorian Jars Hanis met his gaze with the expressive face of the very experienced who did his duty no matter how great the pain. Eron was not able to read the expression—disdain? fury? triumph? fear of the unknown? It could have been any of these things. Eron’s attention was compellingly turned to the leathery fam that Jars had produced in his hand, Eron’s fam, the mental wealth of one short lifetime, stolen, still whole. He stared at it, coveting all the precious experiences he no longer remembered.
The First Ranker spoke. “By an infamous act you have violated the conditions of the covenant, Eron Osa, and our duty to mankind calls for us to deal with that offense quickly.” Jars’ hand flicked through a code-gesture, probably the same one that the Founder had used when in a mood to clear his desk. The ancient disintegrator activated, petals opening. Centered within its bronze maw was a light hardly brighter than the ambient illumination, but moving slowly in chaotic turbulence.
How did one defend oneself against such a machine? Bits of odd information came to Eron’s organic mind from the Order of Zenoli Warriors. There was an attack move—kai-un—he could make right now that would sweep his leathery fam from Jars’ hands (breaking them) while propelling his body into a swinging thrust that would take out the three bailiffs before they could even think about using their neuronic whips. It would be over in half a jiff.
Except... even his muddled mind knew that the zenoli reflexes were no longer there, that his muscles were out of training, that zenoli skills required the intercession of a fam. It was weird to be so certain of this; he had no idea when he had last trained or what it meant to be zenoli.
He stood at a moment of entropic no return. All that he valued was about to cease. His wishes did not count... yet still, at this last moment, he couldn’t resign; he willed time to freeze... futilely. The fingers of Jars Hanis continued to move forward, as if holding garbage, then slacked their grip. Eron’s eyes attached to his fam as it went spinning down, into the maw of the disintegrator. The opal turbulence there erupted into a flash of coruscations—which sank away immediately. In the finality of that flash the resolving capacity of Eron’s conscious mind had been degraded by a factor of a hundred. He would never be able to awaken from his haze. Never...
The petaled maw closed. A whole life’s work—uncountable skills, his off-loaded memories, the nuances of an active life—all lost to oblivion. And those secret love poems... Vm dead, thought Eron in shock. They had confined him inside the mind of an animal! What foolish thing did I do to come to this? Gone was his vast hoard of associated data, far larger than any organic brain could hold, gone were his quantronic agents, his research staff, his reminders, his organizers. He no longer knew even enough about what he had done to repent for his sins. He couldn’t release his eyes from the machine of his death.
Anger, uncontrolled by his fam, was surprising him with its intensity. He needed distracting. While slow tears leaked from the pressure vessel of a monumental rage, he glanced upward again at the glory of a distant ceiling. At least his senses were alive! Other than the rage, his organic mind seemed to be working well, what sluggish little there was of it. Is this what a dog felt like in a viceroy’s palace?
He was escorted by the bailiffs through the labyrinthine Lyceum to an obscure room among the laboratories and given plebeian clothes. The room was entirely white. The white was so soft that even comers seemed to blend into the whiteness. A narrow mirror showed a man in his early thirties, and that was the first time he had been able to calibrate his age. The bailiffs withdrew, leaving him with a slight woman in white whom he was tempted to flee—but he noticed the discreet presence of bulbous damping-field generators which she could probably arm faster than he could think. Or else they were built-in roboguards ready to interfere if his actions went beyond certain parameters. The bailiffs had only been for show. The lethal mechanical controls were hidden.
Then he noticed the tentacled machine. He had almost missed the calibration and training apparatus—which was also all white; the technician who stood beside the calibrator was unwrapping a fam! Great Space! His judges weren’t intending to leave him as a famless cripple? It was a wildly exhilarating hope! A man reduced to the state of an unbalanced landlubber cartwheeling around his arse aboard a buffeted ship in microgravity is grateful for any offer that promises him familiar stability. And if it wasn’t his fam, it was a fam!
The technician seated him in her calibration chair and left him to undergo a spinal scan. When she returned she began to instruct him brightly in the use of this common-issue fam, while checking her holos and asking questions as she made adjustments to the fit. This fam contained none of his memories or his hard-earned abilities—but it did hold useful behaviors to guide him within the planetopolis maze; it could provide him with info about government regulations, manage his new pension, or act as an extensive reference library. The library seemed to include a repertoire of behaviors that he surmised wryly might be appropriate for a reformed criminal. A government-issue soul for the executed. It was far from optimal, but it would have to do. Would he be able to upgrade its mathematical abilities?