Rodney made no comment, but Danal noticed faint beads of sweat begin to pop out of the tech’s visible pores.
At the mention of the scar, Danal stared at his body, looking at the white line at the center of his chest where the—knife—had cut. His past seemed to be swathed thickly in cheesecloth, hidden from his view, and he wondered—but any answers rising in his memory melted like snowflakes in a fire. He wanted to reach out and finger the scar, but his muscles could not find the volition to do so.
Supervisor stood in silence for a long moment, apparently to let Rodney fidget and sweat for as long as possible. “Well, Mister Quick? Is he ready?”
“Yes, most certainly. As always, promptly on the deadline. A routine resurrection, madam.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Supervisor held out her right hand, running her fingers along the primary Net keyboard tattooed on the palm. Ten keys, each with five functions coded to the five specific fingerprints on Supervisor’s left hand, made it possible for her to type fifty different characters. She input the proper sequence that linked her to the vast resources of The Net. After she had reoriented herself to her new position as a small blip in the enormous computer database, Supervisor activated the Net-compatible scanners implanted in her eye. Danal endured her inspection as she looked at him through machine eyes.
“Glycerin levels all wrong. And I see a glitch in his brain-wave pattern. Dammit! The bacteria mutated—you weren’t watching him, Mister Quick.” She seemed unaccustomed to using an angry tone of voice, and the words came out awkward, but still threatening.
“Yes! Yes, I was, madam! The nutrient bath was as clear as can be—yellow like chicken soup!” One, and only one, drop of sweat ran down the side of Rodney’s forehead.
“I somehow doubt you saw nothing unusual. Even you aren’t quite that stupid. You’ve been licking the glass on the female tanks again, haven’t you?”
“No, madam!” He sounded indignant. “You know how attentive I’ve been, especially with this Servant.”
Supervisor abruptly ignored Rodney and turned to the placid-looking Servant who stood damp and naked under the harsh lights. “Danal, what do you remember from your past life?”
Danal wrinkled his forehead a little, but stood silent.
“He’s brain-damaged! Aww, shit!” Rodney gasped to himself. Nonchalantly, but with amazing speed, Supervisor boxed him in the ear to silence him.
“Nothing,” Danal finally answered. “I don’t remember anything.”
Supervisor paused, looking somewhat surprised. Rodney breathed a loud sigh of relief and put his hands on his hips, trying to regain a semblance of control. “Why did you take so long to answer?”
“I was thinking.” The words flowed easily through his vocal cords now. After an oblivion of rest, he wanted to stretch his voice, to shout, to sing. But his body didn’t move. He stood and waited, like a mannequin.
Supervisor and the tech looked at him strangely for a moment.
“Servant, Command: Input Mode.” Supervisor’s fingers raced across the tattooed keyboard on her palm.
Danal’s body responded of its own volition, controlled by the microprocessor. His arms and legs snapped to attention, and he opened his mind to receive.
In less than a second The Net scanned Danal’s new identity and confirmed his name and the name of his Master, Vincent Van Ryman. After a short pause, short even for the microprocessor’s view of time, bytes of information filed onto his memory, and his parched mind rapidly absorbed the data.
The Net gave him nuggets of his Master Van Ryman’s history and habits, presumably so Danal could be a better Servant for him. All at once, and without time to sort through the facts and arrange them in any order, Danal learned that Vincent Van Ryman lived a comfortable life from the profits of when his father Stromgaard had sold his share of Resurrection, Inc. to Francois Nathans. Protected by elaborate Intruder Defense Systems, Van Ryman lived alone in an eccentrically antique home.
Not alone.
What about Julia?
Julia? Danal wondered. The thought had come to him from the far reaches of his mind, whispering at the corners of his ears like memories shouting at him through miles of dense fog. The thought came with no explanation, no further details—who was Julia? Other memories, a seething pot of déjà vu boiled far beneath the surface of his brain, out of the microprocessor’s reach.
Another pause in the microprocessor’s slowed-down time—Danal felt The Net picking around in his mind, double-checking, making sure of his identity. Danal kept his thoughts vividly aware, though he didn’t know what to expect, or how he would know if something went wrong. His core-programming penetrated deeper than instinct, molding his life, making him know that he was not to ask questions, not to think, not to feel.
He suspected that he already knew as much as a Servant should know about his Master, but The Net divulged yet another file, this one coded for a much higher-level password.
Vincent Van Ryman was the leader of the neo-Satanists,
not anymore!
a secret society that had adapted ancient Satanism to the context of modern technology. Van Ryman had, however, denounced his connections with the group, and had become one of its strongest opponents—but recently he had returned to the fold again, with a zeal and vehemence that overshadowed even his initial fervor.
impossible!
Danal’s head swam with a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts, ghosts of memory fleeing like shadows when ever he tried to focus on them. He was a Servant. His mind was a clean slate, polished smooth by passage through death and back. He had nothing of his past.
Or, more likely, he was not able to access the memories… but he knew they existed, closeted away somewhere. And these spurious glitches of thought jumping out helter-skelter onto his forebrain—did they flash back to a life that never existed? Who knew what dreams and fantasies a brain could summon and create during the deepest sleep of all?
By the time Danal had assimilated all this, Supervisor’s finger still hadn’t had enough time to lift itself from the keypad on her palm. “Completed,” she said to no one in particular. “Servant: What is your name?”
“My name is Danal.”
“Who is your Master?”
“Vincent Van Ryman.”
“See, I told you he wasn’t brain-damaged,” Rodney interrupted. “I watched him like he was my own baby.”
Supervisor ignored him completely. “What is the square root of 49?”
“Seven.”
“Spell the word ‘Rhinoceros.’”
“R-H-I-N-O-C-E-R-O-S.”
Supervisor tested him with the standard questions, assessing the baggage of knowledge he had managed to carry over from his first life.
“He tests out quite high,” she commented after she had finished. Rodney grinned broadly, as if barely able to control himself from giggling now that the terror and uncertainty had passed.
Danal said nothing. He waited, wishing he had some tool to dig deeper into his memories and bring them into the light—or cauterize them and seal the images below his consciousness forever.
6
Danal stared out the narrow window of the Enforcer’s hovercar as the Metroplex rushed by below. He sat back in the detention/cargo compartment, saying nothing. The Enforcer escort seemed to ignore him.
The elevator had taken Danal up from the lower levels of Resurrection, Inc., leading him to the lobby. Most of the reception area had been decorated with deeply grained clonewood, giving it the rich, somber appearance of an old-time funeral parlor. Danal had stepped out of the lift and, without moving, stared at the carpet, the ornaments, the light-fountain, the receptionist. Only a moment later, one of the Enforcers came and took him to a waiting hovercar, commanding him to wait in back.