The voice and the location were the same—the desk speakers—but it was the other mouth that was moving. A translation system in the desk piped the actual speech out in a form Dresser could understand.
Now that he concentrated, he could hear the words themselves: a faint rumble, like that of distant artillery. It was meaningless and scarcely audible. He would have to watch to determine which of the pair was speaking—
But watching anything was easy. Dresser could see the entire room without turning his head. He noticed every movement, no matter how slight—nostrils flaring for a breath, the quiver of eyelashes at the start of a blink. His new brain combined the images of over a hundred facet eyes and sorted for the differences in the views they presented.
“It was obvious before we started that the enemy’s numbers are enormous,” Blue continued. “We now realize that Ichton weapons are formidable as well. In some ways—”
The desk translated Blue’s throat clearing as a burst of static.
“Well, anyway, they’re quite formidable.”
The difficulty was that almost all Dresser now saw was movement. The background vanished beyond ten meters or so. Even closer objects were undifferentiated blurs until they shifted position. Though Dresser knew—remembered—the physical differences between human males and females, he couldn’t see details so fine, and he lacked the hormonal cues that would have sexed individuals of his own kind.
Ye Gods, his own kind!
“You’ll be landed back near the site where your original was captured, Sergeant Dresser,” Blue went on.
The machine translator rasped Dresser’s nerve endings with its compression. Its words lacked the harmonics that made true speech a thrill to hear no matter what its content.
“You shouldn’t have any difficulty infiltrating the Ichton forces,” interjected White. “The natural recognition patterns of your body will appear—are real, are totally real.”
Dresser suddenly remembered the last stage of the firefight in the gully. He perceived it now through the senses of his present body. The Ichton flung from the vehicle, under attack but uncertain from where—
Sound and movement close by, a threat.
Spinning and blasting before the enemy can strike home.
Reacting before the higher brain can determine that the target was merely a part of the food supply which hadn’t been processed before the attack occurred.
Dresser screamed. Both humans flinched away from the high-frequency warble.
“I’m not a bug!” he cried. “I won’t! I won’t kill babies!”
“Sergeant,” said White, “we realize the strain you’re under—”
“Though of course, you volunteered,” Blue said.
“—but when your personality has fully integrated with the body into which it’s been copied,” White continued, “the—dichotomies—will not be quite so, ah, serious. I know—that is, I can imagine the strain you’re experiencing. It will get better, I promise you.”
“Sergeant . . ,” said Blue, “I’ll be blunt. We’re hoping you can find a chink in the Ichtons’ armor. If you can’t, the mission of the Stephen Hawking is doomed to fail. And all lifeforms in at least this galaxy are, quite simply, doomed.”
“Except for the Ichtons themselves,” White added.
The machine couldn’t capture intonation; memory told Dresser that the bluster of a moment before had vanished.
Dresser’s memory tumbled out a kaleidoscope of flat-focus images: a wrecked village; cancerous domes scores of kilometers in diameter, growing inexorably; an Ichton—Dresser’s body in every respect—blasting a wailing infant by mistake, a waste of food. . . .
“I can’t l-l-live like this!” Dresser cried.
“It’s only temporary,” Blue said. “Isn’t that right, Doctor? I’m not denying the risk, Sergeant Dresser, but as soon as the mission’s been completed, you’ll be returned to your own form.”
“Ah,” said White. “Yes, of course, Sergeant. But the main thing is just to let your mind and body integrate. You’ll feel better shortly.”
“I think the best thing now is for you to start right in on the program,” said Blue. “I’ll bring in your briefing officers immediately. You’ll see that we’ve taken steps to minimize the risk to you.”
Blue continued to speak. All Dresser could think of was that tiny Gerson, like a living teddy bear.
5
The screen showed six personnel entering the ward where the Ichton clone hunched. One of the newcomers was a Gerson.