Keep him busy, Lewis ordered Walter Harman as the pilot followed him down the stairs.
No problem, Ive got a thousand dumb questions lined up. Atlantis hadnt been discovered when I was alive.
Lewis reached the landing pad and tensedthis was it, make or break time. He had altered his facial features considerably during the starflight; that old journalist back on Lalonde had given him a nasty moment. He waited for the approaching Edenist to shout an alarm to the island.
Eysk gave a slight bow in greeting, and directed an identity trait at Lewis. He waited politely for Lewis to return the punctilio.
Lewis didnt have one. He hadnt known. His only source of data on Edenist customs was far beyond his grasp.
Deep down at the centre of his brain there was a presence, the soul which used to own the body he now possessed. A prisoner held fast by the manacle bonds of Lewiss thoughts.
All of the possessors had a similar prisoner, visualized as a tiny homunculus contained within a sphere of cephalic glass. They pleaded and they begged to be let out, to come back; annoying background voices, a gnats buzz across consciousness. The possessed could use them, torment them with glimpses of reality in return for information, learning how to blend in with the modern, starkly alien society into which they had come forth.
But the centre of Lewiss mind contained only a heavy darkness. He hadnt told the others that, they were all so boastful of how they controlled their captives, so he just brazened it out. The soul he had usurped as he came to this body neither entreated nor threatened. Lewis knew it was there, he could sense the surface thoughts, cold and hard, formidable with resolution. Waiting. The entity frightened him, he had come to possess the body the same way he had walked Messopias corridors, The King of Strutthinking he could handle it. Now the first fractures of insecurity in his hyped-up confidence were multiplying. The usurped souls personality was far stronger than him; he could never have withstood such dread isolation, not simply beyond sensation, but knowing sensation was possible. What kind of person could?
Are you all right?eysk asked kindly.
Im sorry. I think it may have been something I ate. And the ride down was a god-fucking bitch.
Eysks eyebrow rose. Indeed?
Yeah, feel like Im gonna puke. Be all right in a minute.
I do hope so.
This is Walter Harman, Lewis said out loud, knowing he was making a colossal balls-up of things. A pilot, so he claims. After that flight, think Im going to ask the captain for a dekko at his licence. He laughed at his witticism.
Walter Harman smiled broadly, and put out his hand. Pleasure to meet you. This is one hell of a planet. Ive never been here before.
Eysk seemed taken aback. Your enthusiasm is most gratifying. I hope you enjoy your stay.
Thanks. Say, I tasted some gollatail a year back, have you got any round here?
Im just going for a walk, get some air,lewis said. Down in his memories were a thousand hangovers; he gathered together the phantom sensation of nausea and cranial malaise, then broadcast them into the affinity band. It ought to clear my head.
Eysk flinched at the emetic deluge. Quite.
Id like to try some again, maybe take back a stock of my own, Walter Harman prompted. Old Lewis here can tell you what our ships rations are like.
Yes, Eysk said. I believe we have some. His gaze never left Lewiss back.
Great, thats just great.
Lewis stepped over the half-metre ridge of electrophorescent cells around the pad, and headed towards the islands rim. There was one of the floating quays ahead, a twenty-metre crane to one side for lifting smaller boats out of the water.
Sorry about this,lewis told the island personality. A flight has never had this effect before.
Do you require a medical nanonic package?
Lets leave it a minute and see. Sea wind always was the best cure for headaches.
As you wish.
Lewis could hear Walter Harman chattering away inanely behind him. He reached the metal railing that guarded the rim, and stood beside the crane. It was a spindly column and boom arrangement made from monobonded carbon struts, lightweight and strong. But heavy enough for his purpose. He closed his eyes, focusing his attention on the structure, feeling its texture, the rough grain of carbon crystals held together with hard plies of binding molecules. Atoms glowed scarlet and yellow, their electrons flashing in tight fast orbits.
Miscreant energistic pulses raced up and down the struts, sparking between molecules. He felt the others in the spaceplane cabin lending their strength, concentrating on a point just below the boom pivot. The carbons crystalline lattice began to break down. Spears of St Elmos fire flickered around the pivot.
A tortured creaking sound washed across the rim of the island. Eysk looked round in confusion, peering against pad eighteens glare.
Lewis, move now please,the island personality said. Unidentified static discharge on the crane. It is weakening the structure.
Where?he played it dumb, looking round, looking up.
Lewis, move.
The compulsion almost forced his legs into action. He fought it with bursts of mystification, then panic. Remembering the power blade as it descended, the sight of blood and chips of bone spewing out of the wound. It hadnt happened to him, it was some horror holo he was watching on the screen. Distant. Remote.
Lewis!
Carbon shattered with a sudden thunderclap. The boom jerked, then began to fall, curving down in that unreal slow motion hed seen once before. And nothing had to be faked any more. Fear staked him to the ground. A yell started to emerge from his lips
Mistake. Your greatest and your last, Lewis. When this body dies my soul will be free. And then I can return to possess the living. And when that happens I will have the same power as you. After that we shall meet as equals, I promise you
as the edge of the boom smashed into his torso. There was no pain, shock saw to that. Lewis was aware of the boom finishing its work, crushing him against the polyp. Body ruined.
His head hit the ground with a brutish smack, and he gazed up mutely at the stars. They started to fade.
Transfer,pernik ordered. the mental command was thick with sympathy and sorrow.
His eyes closed.
Pernik awaited. Lewis saw it through a long dark tunnel, a vast bitek construct glowing with the gentle emerald aura of life. Colourful phantom shapes slithered below its translucent surface, tens of thousands of personalities, at once separate and in concord: the multiplicity. He felt himself drifting towards it along the affinity bond, his energistic nexus abandoning the mangled body to infiltrate the naked colossus. Behind him the dark soul rose as smoothly as a shark seeking wounded prey to re-inherit the dying body. Lewiss tightly whorled thoughts quaked in fright as he reached the islands vast neural strata. He penetrated the surface, and diffused himself throughout the network, instantly surrounded by a babble of sights and sounds. The multiplicity murmuring amongst itself, autonomic subroutines emitting pulses of strictly functional information.
His dismay and disorientation was immediately apparent. Ethereal tentacles of comfort reached out to reassure him.