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thus pacified yourself to seek no further for my secrets? Did you assume
falsely that the odd bits and pieces stored in my trunk would assemble into my
machinery of life? Shame, boy!
It's a tradition from time immemorable, an apprentice's duty, to ferret out
his master's secrets. Ah well.
You're slow and late, but at least you've arrived. You know now where my
devices are hidden?"
Benadek nodded, focusing on Achibol's chest. "Of course," the mage chuckled,
even though his lengthy speech seemed to have weakened him again. "Everything
is inside. Miniaturized, to be sure, but still too
bulky to fit in a human body, with all its wet machinery. Do you begin to
understand?"
Benadek forced his lips to open, sucked breath through his throat, and forced
it back across his vocal cords. "How much of you is human?"
Again Achibol chuckled. "Not my balls or their impressive companion, nor my
guts or my other eye. Not even most of my muscles. My skin is still my own,
though modified, and I've retained a few shreds of contractile tissue beneath
it my smile, thus, is my own. What else?"
"Your brain, Master."
"Excellent, boy and why so little else? Come now, use the facilities you were
born with and those you stole from Circe's cryo-vaults. Why am I no more than
a brain and a bag of skin hiding a tin-and-plastic imitation body? What
purpose is served?"
Benadek, faced with Achibol's barrage of questions, delivered in a manner he
was uncomfortably familiar with, replied more easily than before. "For the
filters and such that sustain you to be carried within, other functions had to
be sacrificed, leaving room only for your brain and the glands that support
it."
"Exactly, lad. I'm proud of you once more. What else?"
"You must have an atomic-decay battery for energy. Your bones? I don't know."
"Silicon, apatite, and gold," Achibol told him. "Interwoven lattices with
organic carbon-fiber reinforcing. I
don't break legs easily." His face relaxed slightly. He smiled benignly.
Benadek relaxed too, realizing that this . . . man . . . was still the Achibol
he had known.
"Anything else, boy?"
"The eyes, Master. Infrared projector and scanner both in the right. What's in
the other one?"
"Rangefinder, short focal-length organic-lensed and mirrored catadioptric
telescope, a microscope and several low-discrimination pickups for the rest of
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the electromagnetic spectrum. My microwave radar used to be in the right one."
"Do your bones have other functions too?"
"Ah you're still thinking. Good. Of course they do what a waste of good space,
otherwise. There are biochips and nonmagnetic ROM for my autonomic functions,
and protected storage for those bits and pieces of gland and organ that keep
my brain happy and sane. And now you have it all. So . . . speculate, boy.
Generalize a bit, if you will."
"Master, I know now that you are only as immortal as your fabricated systems,
and that some of them are failing."
"Failing? Hmmph. Many failed so long ago I've entirely forgotten the habits of
dependence on them.
Here, under my fingernails, were microprobes generalized chip pinouts and
chemical injectors for nasty compounds. I had to remove those myself, at no
little discomfort, for fear the only one poisoned would be me. Unfortunately,
other functions had to be sacrificed with them, and the `talisman' is only a
poor substitute. Even my self-diagnostics are casualties of entropy, so I
can't tell you just how much of
me still functions. Did you hear the noises in my chest?"
"I did, Master."
"You heard my heart fail. I don't need diagnostics to know that. It stopped
several minutes ago, I'd guess, though my clock-functions are erratic."
"How do you remain alive now? Your organic brain must still need blood."
"I have two hearts. Now I'm at the mercy of the primary one, shut down
centuries ago when it became unreliable. It was the backup unit that just
failed."
Benadek hesitated to ask the obvious question, but Achibol anticipated it.
"How long? An hour or a year a decade if I'm lucky." He drew himself up,
preparing to rise. "So, succeed or fail, we must hurry, if I'm to see the end
of this mission of ours."
"We'll succeed, Master. You'll live. Surely there must be some way to repair
you. We'll find that too."
Benadek's brave words belied the knot of feelings bound tightly inside him.
"If Gibraltar Base survives, and if we succeed here, I have half a mind to
attempt the trip. There are spare parts, and equipment to maintain my brain
functions during major repairs. But that's an ocean away, and no ships have
crossed it in eighteen hundred years. We'll cross that water if we come to it,
but now help me up. I fear to strain this worn-out pump."
Benadek and Teress helped Achibol regain his feet. Ameling observed, not
understanding what had transpired, but knowing that a crisis had arisen and
passed. Her brief glimpse of the steely eye confirmed that the sorcerer was
unique, and that she had chosen rightly to exert herself for his cause.
Both Achibol's eyes looked normal now, as the four of them trudged carefully
over the wet, slippery ice to the edge of the stagnant glacier. They made camp
at the foot of the ascending trail. Benadek pulled portable shelters from his
pack, and when they were expanded and joined together, Ameling saw that no one
would have to sleep in wet blankets. She was glad, then, that their ascent had
been postponed, for though she knew she would soon die, she no longer wished
to hasten it to the contrary, she wanted to live, if only to see what great
events the strange threesome might bring about.
The climb was less difficult than it seemed from below. Though there were
switchbacks and places where the weakened Achibol had to be hauled up on
braided leather rope, the grade was otherwise gentle. At the top, they waded
through deep snow. Yasha's cave was visible as they neared the ridge.
Not until they came within a few dozen paces of the cave-mouth did the
talisman indicated the radiation hazard was severe. Benadek insisted that he
go on alone. Achibol protested. "Yasha won't know you, boy. If he's truly
deranged, I may have a chance of getting through to him."
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"How many heavy particles can your hardware sustain? Teress and Ameling will
hold you here if you try to follow." The mage saw the women nod. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]