Don’t worry— you will remember everything. You will still be you inside.
We dare not tamper much without risking killing that spark we desire.
The psychochemistry was simple, less than child’s play to the masters of
Melchior. Eliminate the blockers, shift the hormones, create others that would
be manufactured ever after. She was not merely oriented back to female, she was
reoriented to very female. She would be like an animal in heat, single-minded
and insatiable, until a pregnancy occurred. No test would be needed. Once the
brain received notification and began the preparatory processes, those animal
urges would cease. She would be normal, in full control, and since she would
retain her old memories and basic personality, and since she would find her
animal self unnerving if not somewhat frightening, it was predicted that during
the whole period she would probably prefer women as company, friends, and
lovers. Once the child was born, her body would begin a repair and reset, and
when it was prepared once more, in a month, perhaps two, the cycle would begin
again. It would continue this way until she ran out of eggs, perhaps thirty
years from now.
She would not, of course, have to tend to or raise all those children. There
would be a staff for that, partly picked from the female prisoner population. It
was thought that the Chows might be ideal to start this staff once other
experimenters were done with them. The two North American newcomers would also
be good for this: no other projects had been planned for them since they really
were surprise additions. The silent one with the painted body desperately needed
to tend to children, and short of going through the Institute’s Metamorphosis
Clinic there was no way she could physically have them herself.
Song Ching herself, however, would be renamed and programmed to respond to her
new name. Because the working language agreed to was English, since that was
what the computers responded to, it was felt that it should be a name that
sounded appropriate in English. After some debate, the mostly non-Oriental staff
decided on China Nightingale. Although almost twenty percent of the staff was of
Chinese extraction, there would be only one China.
But because China would have access to their computers, they wanted other
guarantees. They could not threaten her with the loss of computer access because
it was for their benefit, not hers, that they allowed it at all. Although she
would not actually have to raise her children, she was programmed to be almost
fanatically possessive toward them. Her children would always come before any
hatreds, grievances, resentments, or personal anything. She would not risk their
lives, safety, or future on risky undertakings against the Institute. They would
in effect be hostages to her good behavior.
The other guarantee was that she did not have to see to work with her machines
and her theories but that instead this would force her to interact with them
vocally at all times. That way, with only a slight slowdown in her ability to
work, she would never be able to encrypt or bury discoveries or requests for
information. It would all be recorded and analyzed by a research team and
another, independent computer. The blindness, they decided, had been a stroke of
sheer luck. Conditioned to repairing the most grievous injuries, able to grow
eyes, limbs, even things like tails that weren’t there before, they never would
have thought to create such a handicap. Now, though, they removed her eyes and
replaced them with realistic but totally nonfunctional synthetics with an
unregistered retinal pattern.
The cosmetics completed the work. Her voice had been lowered a half octave; they
raised it an octave and a half. It sounded shrill and unpleasant to her ears,
but they assured her it sounded quite nice to others. It was a very high
soprano, cut with a certain throaty softness. They thickened the lips, broadened
the mouth, and gave her something of a pronounced overbite, pushed back her ears
a bit, enlarged her breasts, and widened her hips, then gave her a new permanent
set of fingerprints and footprint patterns, also unregistered. None of the
changes could be genetically transmitted, of course, so they felt free to
experiment. She was still quite attractive, although not in the classical sense
that she had been, but the only thing she had in common with Song Ching was her
height and the fact that both were Chinese.
Finally, they told her all that they had done and why. They also told her that
they had a way of locking it in, of making the brain reject any attempts at
physical or psychochemical change. She could still be hypnoed or mindprinted,
but any attempt to change the physical composition, which included both the
blindness and the psychochemicals, would be doomed. Then they reimprinted her,
turning her silver identifiers a metallic red. Now she was property of the
Institute. The new chemical would prevent her from leaving the Institute area;
she would live as well as work there. To leave would automatically flag
security.
She would never really be able to visualize what she looked like now, but she
accepted the idea that no one who had known her would ever recognize her. This
and the blindness she accepted and paired off against the guilt which had forced
her to become Chu Li. What she could neither forgive nor forget was what they
had turned her into for their own purposes. She would be a thinking, working
human being only so long as she was pregnant. Worse, she knew that once her
first child was born, they would have a sword at her throat. Even if one day she
determined how to escape, she would be held here, for they would never let her
take the child, and she would not be able to risk it. After that, the only hope
of freedom of action would be to do what they feared and seize control of their
system. Doing this with verbal queries and commands and having to enter
everything verbally would be next to impossible unless she found allies, and
that might take a long, long time. Escape within those nine months seemed even
more impossible and could certainly not be done without a lot of help, all of
which would be years in coming, if it ever did.
Or, then again, it might come in three months.
She was walking down the hall to her quarters, a route with which she was now
totally familiar. Her quarters, which were large and luxurious with fur and silk
and even luxury foods and toiletries, she knew now better than she knew computer
coding. Unless someone carelessly left something for her to trip on in the hall,
it would be almost impossible to tell on this route that she was blind at all.
She felt someone approach from behind and sensed it was a woman. She didn’t know
how she knew, but she was getting quite good at that sort of thing.
Stop right here, the woman hissed in oddly accented English. This is a point
where monitors do not reach because there is no entrance or exit, but keep your
voice low.
She frowned. Who are you? What do you want?
A potential friend. Is it true that you know how to override a spaceship pilot?
That you can independently command a ship?
I think so. I did it once.
That was a premodified ship and strictly interplanetary. Could you do it to an
unmodified interstellar craft?
I—I think so. The theory is the same. Only someone would have to get the
necessary equipment and follow my instructions. I couldn’t do it myself, and the
work would have to be done in a space suit. Why do you ask this? Are you
tormenting me?
You give me the list of what you would need, down to the last part. All of it.
Then work out any problems and theoretical situations on the computer. They
won’t mind. They feel that there is no escape from here.
Is there?
We have a way out and a place to go but no means of getting there. It was
supposed to be all arranged, but the people who run this place cannot be trusted
in this matter. For this reason, we need you.
She couldn’t decide whether the accent was real or put on to fool her and
prevent identification. Who is we?
You know all you need to know for now. You just do the work, and we will make
history.
She knew the mysterious woman had walked on, and she stood there and listened.
There was the sound of heels hitting the floor. Whoever she was, she was staff,
certainly no prisoner. Even in the velvet-lined Institute she was not permitted
any clothing or personal possessions. She thought it must be a trick, Clayben or
his people getting her onto this simply to see if she could work it out and do
it for their own ends. Still, it could be the break she had prayed for. Even if
it was a trick, they might find themselves in something of a bind if she were
calling the shots.
She began the next day by running an inquiry on interstellar ships in the area.
On the regular runs there were only two, both freight haulers with no human
accommodations sections aboard. There was, however, something else.
Sixty-one master transports, all in mothball storage in orbit around Jupiter,
the computer informed her.
What is a master transport? she asked.
Please put on the headset, the computer responded, and she did so.
Pictures formed in her mind, along with plans and even schematics. The
information was startling. The ships were huge. They could carry Melchior itself
inside them, although it was several kilometers wide, and still carry and
support a population equal to half of her native China as she knew it.
Master System had been in a hurry almost nine hundred years before. It needed to
facilitate the diaspora quickly and in large chunks. It had to transport, in the
end, five billion people along with all the equipment and supplies to get them
started on the new worlds. These ships had done their job in years rather than
centuries. There had, however, been a price. Unwieldy, they consumed enormous
quantities of energy and were impractical for anything needed today. Master
System, however, had not simply abandoned them but stored them just in case it
ever needed such ships again. To build such things was a mammoth undertaking,
and it would be even more difficult now.
She already knew that the older a design was, the easier the pilot interface.
These ships dated back almost to the start of ship design, to within forty years
after the birth of Master System itself. The interface was obvious and easily
used. With a start, she realized that she had seen these schematics before and
just not realized their sheer size and scale.
The illegal techs in the mountains of China. This was what their interface had
been designed to take over. This was where they wanted to go. And they had
figured out most of how to do it. It came back to her whole, in a flash, from
her recent past. More, it was something that she didn’t have to ask this
computer about one damned bit.
She didn’t know what was up or whose tricks were whose, but if they got her
somehow on that bridge, with that interface hooked in, there was no way she
could be stopped. She’d show them all. She’d steal one of Master System’s
greatest ships, and maybe Melchior, too, while she was at it!
Both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman had been called to the Institute at least
three times but so far Hawks had not. He had been somewhat concerned about them,
but Cloud Dancer assured him that the people there were actually quite nice and
quite civil and that nothing on the order of the magic box had been done. He
wasn’t so sure about that. Cloud Dancer had left right after breakfast one
morning and had returned after dinner the following night, yet she was convinced
she’d spent no more than half a day away. He could sense no real change in them
except, of course, that both seemed to be very matter-of-fact about that foreign
high-tech world and not at all suspicious of it or its masters. Also, both
seemed to be quite a bit more romantic. He wondered what the hell was up.
Finally he got a call himself, and he was almost relieved. He had begun to
suspect that they had forgotten about him. He went up to the door to the entry
chamber, and when it opened for him, he entered the green imprinting room. The
door closed behind him.
Hold it right there, Chief, a familiar gravelly voice said. This is as far as
you go. This is about the only point that isn’t monitored around here, since the
fellow in the control room here, who’s me at the moment, can zap the living shit
out of you.
Hawks sighed. Raven. I almost expected you. In fact, I expected you a very long
time ago.
This joint ain’t easy, Chief. Besides, it’s screwed up. They only follow orders
when they feel like it, and since they got you and me and everybody else, they
don’t care who in here knows it. I was supposed to break you out, Chief. Chen’s
orders. You can figure the rest.
Hawks nodded. I thought as much. But you can’t?
Couldn’t, anyway. I got it figured now. It won’t be easy, and there are no
guarantees, but I think I got the way. I even got a couple of places to go, in
fact. Never mind where I got ’em, but it wasn’t from Chen. You want out?
You know I do. But why tell me all this about Chen?
Hell, Chief—Chen’s double-crossed everybody else, and I figure I’m next when
the job’s done, if it can be done. What the hell do I owe him, anyway? I don’t