“Now arrest all the traitors who were helping him. If they resist, kill them!”
Hector’s head was buzzing. He couldn’t get his eyes open all the way. He seemed to be in a tiny unlit cubicle, metal-walled, with a blank view screen staring at him. Something was on his head, something else strapped around his chest. He couldn’t see his hands; they were down on his lap and his head wouldn’t move far enough to look at them. Nor would his hands move, despite his will.
He heard voices. Whether they were outside the cubicle or inside his head, he couldn’t tell.
“What do you mean, nothing? He must have some thoughts in his head!”
“Yes, Minister Kor, there are. But they are so random, so patternless…, I’ve never examined a brain like his. I don’t see how he can walk straight, let alone think.”
“He is a natural telepath,” Kor’s harsh voice countered. “Perhaps he’s hiding his true thought patterns from you.”
“Under the influence of the massive drug doses we’ve given him? Impossible.”
“The drugs might not affect him.”
“No, that couldn’t be. His physical condition shows that the drugs have stupefied him almost completely.”
A new voice piped up. “The monitor shows that the drugs are wearing off; he’s beginning to regain consciousness.”
“Dose him again,” Kor ordered.
“More drugs? The effect could be dangerous… even fatal.”
“Must I repeat myself? The Watchman is a natural telepath. If he regains full consciousness inside the dueling machine, he can disappear at will. The consequences of that will be fatal… to you!”
Hector tried to open his eyes fully, but the lids felt gummy, as though they’d been glued together. Inside the dueling machine! If I can get myself together before they put me under again.… His hands weighed two hundred kilos apiece, and he still couldn’t move his head. But through his half-open eyes he could see that the view screen was softly glowing, even though blank. The machine was on. They’ve been trying to pick my brain, he realized.
“Here’s the syringe, Doctor,” another voice said. “It’s fully loaded.”
Frantically, Hector tried to brush the cobwebs from his mind. Concentrate on Acquatainia, he told himself. Concentrate! But he could hear the footsteps approaching his booth.
And then his mind seemed to explode. His whole body wrenched violently with a flood of alien thought pouring through him.
9
One moment Odal was sitting in the Acquatainian dueling machine, thinking about Geri Dulaq. An instant later he knew he was in Kerak, and someone else was in the dueling machine with him. Hector! His mind was open and Odal could look deep.… A flash like a supernova explosion rocked Odal’s every fiber. Two minds exposed to each other, fully, amplified and cross-linked by the circuits of the machine, fused together inescapably. Every nerve and muscle in both their bodies arched as though a hundred thousand volts of electricity were shooting through them.
Odal! Hector realized. He could see into Odal’s mind as if it were his own. In a strange, double-visioned sort of way, he was Odal… himself and Odal, both at the same time. And Odal, sharing Hector’s mind, became Hector.
Hector saw long files of cadets marching wearily in heavy gray uniforms, felt the weight of the lumpy field packs on their backs, sweated under the scorching sun.
Odal felt the thrill of a boy’s first sight of a star ship as it floated magnificently in orbit.
Now Hector was running through the narrow streets of an ancient town, running with a dozen other teenagers in brown uniforms, wielding clubs, shouting in the night shadows, smashing windows of certain shops and homes where a special symbol had been crudely painted only a few minutes earlier. And if anyone came outside to protest, they smashed him, too.
Odal saw a Star Watch instructor sadly shaking his head at his/Hector’s attempts to command the bridge of a training ship.
Standing at attention, face frozen in a grim scowl, while the Leader harangued an assembly of a half-million troops and citizens on the anniversary of his ascent to power.
Running after the older boys, trying to get them to let you into the game; but they say you’re too small, too dumb, and above all too clumsy.
Holding back the tears of anger and fright while the captain slowly explained why your parents had been taken away. He was almost using baby talk. He didn’t like this task, didn’t like sending grown-ups to wherever it was that they put bad people. But Mother and Father were bad. They had said bad things about the Leader. And now he would become a soldier and help the Leader and kill all the bad people.
Playing ball in zero gee with four other cadets, floating in the huge, metal-ribbed, spheroidal gym, laughing, trying to toss the ball without flipping yourself into a weightless tumble.
Smashing the smug face of the upperclassman who called his parents traitor. His bloody, surprised face. Kneeing, clubbing, kicking him into silence. No one will mention that subject again.
Standing, shaking with exertion and fear, gun in hand, wanting to kill, wanting to please the girl who screamed for death, but looking into the face of the downed man and realizing that nothing, NOTHING, warrants taking a human life.
Clubbing the moon-faced Dulaq, smashing him down into shrieking blood as the six of you hammered him to death, telling yourself he’s an enemy, an enemy, if I don’t kill him he’ll kill me, if I don’t kill him the Leader will find someone else who will.
Half-thoughts, emotions, snatches of memory. A mother’s face, the special smell of your own room, the sound of laughter. The forgotten past, the buried past, the warmth of the fireplace at home after a day in the snow, the fragrance of Father’s pipe, the satisfied purring of the soft-furred kitten in your arms.
Leaving home saying good-by, Dad still unconvinced that you belonged in the Star Watch. Driving off with the captain, away from the house that was empty now. Fumbling, faltering through training, somehow passing, but always by the barest margin. Being the best, first in the ranks: best student, best athlete, best soldier. Always the best. Learning the real mission of the Star Watch: protect the peace. Learning how to hate, how to kill, and above all, how to revenge yourself against Acquatainia.
Meeting and merging, spiraling together, memories of a lifetime intertwining, interlinking, brain synapses flashing, chemical balances subtly changing, two lives, two histories, two personalities melting together more completely than any two minds had ever known before. Hector and Odal, Odal/Hector—in the flash of that instant when they met in the dueling machine they became briefly one and the same.
And when one of the Kerak meditechs noted the power surging through the machine and turned it off, each of the two young men became an individual again. But a different individual than before. Neither of them could be the same as before. They were linked, irrevocably.
“What is it?” Kor snapped. “What caused the machine to use power like that?”
The meditech shrugged inside his white lab coat. “The Watchman is in there alone. I don’t understand…”
Furious, Kor bustled toward Hector’s booth. “If he’s recovered and escaped, I’ll…”
Both doors opened simultaneously. From one booth stepped Hector, clear-eyed, straight-backed, tall and lean and blond. His face was curiously calm, almost smiling. He glanced across to the other booth.