Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail (5 page)

I remembered Matuze well, but I had to admit I’d never heard of this Ypsir. Well, it was long ago and the Council was pretty large. Besides, who the hell ever knows the head of the civil service anyway?

As to who I was, I got my first mental picture of myself from the briefing, and it was a bit of a shock. I’d had a sense of being younger, true—but the body I now wore was little more than fourteen, barely into puberty. It was, however, a civilized-world-norm body, and that was good enough, although it was from Halstansir, a world I didn’t know. I could infer a lot, though, simply from the skin, basic build, and facial features. I was now relatively tall and thin, with a burnt-orange complexion, and the boyish face had jet-black hair but no trace of sideburns or beard, almond-shaped black eyes, and fairly thick, flat nose over broad lips. It was a strong, handsome face and body—but very, very young-looking.

So what was a fourteen-year-old boy doing on his way to the Diamond? Well, Tarin Bul of Halstansir was a rather exceptional young lad. The son of a local administrator, he’d been raised in pampered splendor. But Halstansir’s Council member, a man named Daca Kra, had apparently used the boy’s father as a scapegoat in a minor scandal, exposing him to ridicule and personal ruin. The older Bul just couldn’t stand it, and, refusing psych treatment, killed himself instead. Such things happened occasionally, particularly on the upper political levels. What
didn’t
happen, even occasionally, was what the boy, who just about worshiped his father, had done then. Taking advantage of the natural sympathy of the first families of Halstansir, Tarin Bul had plotted, planned, and trained to get to a reception for Daca Kra—where he’d assassinated the Councillor, in mid-handshake, by the rather quaint and ugly method of disembowling the man with a sword used in physical training. The boy was a prepubescent twelve at the time, which caused more problems than the nearly unprecedented assassination.

Of course we picked him up and got him off-planet, where we had him evaluated by psychs, but he’d withdrawn from the world into a better one of his own imagination after carrying out the kill. The psychs could hardly reach him at all, though they spent a lot of time trying. Normally they would have simply done a complete wipe of his mind and built a new personality, but Kra’s family used some influence of its own. So now Tarin Bul was out of his shell and on his way to Medusa—but “not really. Bul had died as soon as my mind displaced his. I was now Tarin Bul, and I wondered how an ex-Councillor would take to a boy who’d killed one of his colleagues.

Still, that would be a ways off as yet. I could see certain real advantages in the body—not the least of which was the fact that I had an extra thirty years or so on my life—but there would also be disadvantages as well. There would be the tendency to treat me as a child—and, because it was my cover, I had to go along to a certain extent. But though children get a bit more license than adults in simple behavioral areas, they are also subject to more rigid social controls. That realization led me onto the path of determining my best and most effective persona. The fact that Bul was a male of the civilized worlds born to a political family meant his IQ and general formative education would be expected to be well above average. The fact that he’d engineered a successful assassination and survived, even being sent to the Warden Diamond, was another plus. I would have no trouble convincing anyone that I was quite a bit. older than my years, which eased the problem quite a bit. Being a tough, smart kid would be an easy and useful role to play.

I lay back down on the cot and put myself in a light trance, going over all the briefing information, filing, sorting, thinking everything out. Particularly important were the details, large and small, of Bul’s short life and family, since it was in that area I’d be most vulnerable to a trip-up. I also studied his mannerisms, nervous habits, and the like, and tried to get myself into the mind-set of a small but deadly assassin.

By the time I reached Medusa I knew I’d
better
be perfect for my own sake. I had another assassination to add to Tarin Bul’s total still to come, and though I hoped they would underestimate me, I did not for one moment underestimate Talant Ypsir.

CHAPTER TWO

Transportation and Exposure

Except for the regular meals I had no way to keep track of time, but it was a fairly long trip. Nobody was wasting any money transporting prisoners by the fastest available routes, that was for sure.

Finally, though, we docked with the base ship a third of a light-year out from the Warden system. I understood the situation not so much by any sensation inside my cloister but from the lack of it—the vibration that had been my constant companion stopped. Still the routine wasn’t varied—I assumed they were waiting for a large enough contingent from around the galaxy to make the landing worthwhile. For now, I could only sit and go over my data for the millionth time and, occasionally, reflect on the fact that I probably wasn’t very far from my old body—as I’d come to think of it. I wondered if, perhaps, he didn’t even come down and take a peek at me from time to time, at least from idle curiosity—me and the three others who probably were here as well.

I also had time to reflect on what I knew of the Warden situation itself, the reason for its perfection as a prison. I had not, of course, swallowed that whole. Though there was no such thing as the perfect prison, this one had to be close. Shortly after I was landed on Medusa and started wading in and breathing its air I would be infected with an oddball submicroscopic organism that would set up housekeeping in every cell of my body. There it would live, feeding off me, even earning its keep by keeping disease organisms, infections, and the like in check. The one thing that stuff had was a will to live and it only lived if you did.

But the organism needed something, some trace element or somesuch that was only present in the Warden system. Nobody knew what and nobody had been able to do the real work necessary to find out, but whatever it needed—other than you—was found only in the Warden system. Whatever it was wasn’t in the air, because they ran shuttles between the worlds of the Diamond and in them you breathed the purified, mechanically produced stuff with no ill effect. Not in the food, either. They’d tried that. It was possible for one of the Warden people to live comfortably on synthetics in a totally isolated lab such as a planetary space station. But get too far away, even with Warden food and Warden ah-, and the organism died. Since it had modified your cells to make itself at home, and those cells depended on the organism to keep working properly, you died, too—painfully and slowly, in horrible agony. That distance was roughly a quarter of a light-year from the sun, which explained the location of the base ship.

All four worlds were more than climatologically different. The organism acted consistently in what it did to you on each planet. But—possibly because of distance from the sun, which seemed to be the determining factor in its life, the organism did different things to you depending on which world you were first exposed to it. Whatever it did stuck in just that fashion even if you went to a different world of the Diamond.

The organism seemed to be vaguely telepathic, although nobody could explain quite how. It certainly wasn’t an intelligent organism, though it behaved predictably. Still, most of the changes seemed to involve the colony in one person affecting the colony in another—or others. The individual provided the conscious control, if he could, and that determined who bossed whom. A pretty simple system, even if nobody had yet been able to explain it. I vaguely understood, though, that Medusans were unique in the Diamond in that the Warden organism colony inside you affected you alone in some way, not others. Well, we would have to see.

As for Medusa itself, all I really knew about it was that it was terribly cold and hostile. I cursed again at not having been fed the proper programming to prepare me fully—it would cost time, possibly a lot, just to learn the ropes.

Almost six days—seventeen meals—after I’d arrived at the base ship there was a lurching and a lot of banging around that forced me to the cot and made me slightly seasick. Still, I wasn’t disappointed—it meant that they were making up the consignments and readying for the in-system drop of these cells. I faced what was to come with mixed emotions. On one hand, I desperately wanted to be out of this little box that had provided nothing but endless, terrible boredom for such a long time. The problem was, though, that when I next got out of the box I would just be in a much larger and probably more comfortable box—Medusa itself, no less a cell for being an entire planet. And if my new situation would provide diversion, challenge, excitement, or whatever, lacking in this box, it might also prove, unlike this box, very, very final.

Shortly after the banging started, it stopped again. After a short, expectant pause, I felt a vibration indicating movement. It was much more pronounced than before, telling me that I was either on a much smaller vessel or located nearer the drives.

Still, another five interminable days—fifteen meals—passed before we reached our destination. Long, certainly, but also fast for a sublight carrier, probably a modified and totally automated freighter. Then the vibrations stopped and I knew we were in orbit. Again I had those mixed feelings of trapped doom and exhilaration.

There was a crackling sound and a speaker I’d never even known was there came to life.

“Attention all prisoners!” it commanded; the voice was a metallic parody of a man’s baritone. “We have achieved orbit around the planet Medusa in the Warden system.” Nothing I didn’t know, but the announcement was, I reflected, probably telling the others, however many there were, for the first time. I could understand what they must be going through, although, I was lucky to be going in with my eyes open even if no more voluntarily.

“In a moment,” the voice continued, “the doors to your cells will slide open and you will be able to leave. We strongly recommend you do so, since thirty seconds after the doors open they will close again and a vacuum pump will begin sterilization operations within the cells which would be fatal to anyone who remains.”

Nice touch, I thought. Not only did that insure against breakouts en route, you moved or you died on their schedule. I couldn’t help wonder whether anybody chose death.

“Immediately after you enter the main corridor,” the voice continued, “you will stand in place until the cell doors close. Do not attempt to move from in front of your cell door until it closes or automatic guard equipment will vaporize you. There will be no talking in the corridor. Anyone breaking silence or failing to obey orders precisely will be dealt with instantly. You will receive further instructions once the doors close. Ready to depart—now!”

The door slid open, and I wasted no time in stepping out. A small white box, complete with marks for feet, indicated where you were to stand. I did as instructed, galling as all this was. There was something to being totally naked and isolated on a ship controlled only by computer that humbled you more than was right. I experienced a sense of total futility.

I could still look around and realized that I’d been right. The place where we stood was basically a long sealed hall along whose sides the little cells had been attached. I looked up and down and counted maybe ten or twelve, no more. The cream of the crop, I thought sourly. A handful of men and women, naked and bedraggled, beaten prisoners now, about to be dropped off and left. I wondered why my companions had been chosen rather than wiped, considering the transportation costs alone. What had the computers and psych boys found
in
these dejected specimens that dictated that they should live?
They
didn’t know, that was for sure. I wondered exactly who did.

The doors snapped shut. I waited expectantly, perhaps to hear the scream of somebody who didn’t move fast enough as the air was pumped out, but there was no hint of melodrama. If anybody had taken that way out, it was not evident.

“At my command,” the voice barked from speakers along the ceiling, “you will turn right and walk, slowly, in single file, as far forward as you can. There you will find a special shuttle that will bring you to the surface.

You will take seats from front to back, leaving no empty seats between you, and immediately strap yourselves in.”

I heard some muttering from a couple of my fellow prisoners. Instantly a brief but very visible spurt of light from a side wall hit with an audible hiss just in front of the offenders’ feet. They jumped slightly at this demonstration of power, but all the grumbling and mumbling ceased.

The voice had paused for this interruption, but now took up its instructions with no reference to it. None was needed.

“Right turn—
now!”
it commanded, and we did as instructed. “Walk slowly forward to the shuttle as instructed.”

We walked silently, definitely in no hurry. The metal floor of the corridor was damned cold, which made the shuttle preferable to this damned refrigerator. The shuttle itself was surprisingly comfortable and modern, although the seats weren’t made for naked bodies. I sat about three rows back and attached the safety straps, then-waited for the others to enter. My first impression had been close, I noted. The shuttle itself could seat twenty four, but there were only nine of us—six men and three women.