XV

Doubles

The moment stretched thin, like rubber pulled tight. Then it all snapped back, painful and hard.

"No." Sam couldn't believe him.

He turned and walked away, deeper into the lab, stopping only when a horizontal pipe blocked his path. He stood with his back to her. "Charon downloaded his brain into me."

Sam's legs felt like putty. She barely stayed on her feet. "It can't be. Why would he do that? And how? The method you say he used for Turner Pascal, imaging slices of your brain, kills a person."

"Yes. It does."

"Charon killed himself?"

He turned around to face her. "Yes."

"Why?" Non-invasive imaging methods existed. Surely Charon knew. Maybe they didn't give as precise results; she couldn't say. It wasn't her area of expertise. But she found it hard to believe the differences could be enough that he would commit suicide rather than use them.

Turner spoke tiredly. "He wanted immortality. An android body, one better than his. So he made me. Then he took some drug. A lethal dose. He was working with a colleague, an expert who downloaded his brain into mine."

The worst part was that the macabre tale made sense in a twisted way. "That would explain how you know him so well."

"I blocked off that part of my matrix."

"God, Turner, erase it."

"That would destroy part of my own mind." He watched her anxiously. "I would no longer be myself. I probably couldn't even function."

It didn't surprise her. The evolving codes of an EI brain were too complex and interwoven to fully document. Turner probably couldn't map them all himself. And Charon would have set his code for as much durability as possible. It would take time and concentration for Turner to remove, if he could manage it at all. "You might be able to remove it bit by bit, given long enough."

He blanched. "We may not have that time before he catches us."

"You talk as if he's alive," Sam said.

"He is." Turner spoke bitterly. "You think I'm the only copy of him? He was paranoid people were plotting against him, determined to destroy his genius. I'm sure he made other copies of himself to counter those evildoers he imagined were after him."

Sam felt as if she were sinking into a quagmire. She might have fathomed Charon killing himself if he hadn't wanted more than one Charon to exist. This sounded like madness. Brilliant, but insane. "He doesn't just want immortality. He wants the influence of Sunrise Alley. And he figured out how to find them. Through you."

Turner flushed. "No. He's trapped."

"How?"

"I confined the code that defines him to a portion of my matrix with no influence on the rest."

"Are you sure?" She thought of Bart's changed behavior. "Could he have affected the EIs here while they worked on you?"

"I think that's enough," Bart suddenly said.

Sam jerked. His voice came from all around them. She spoke to the air. "What do you want?"

"I do believe, Dr. Bryton, that we need to make some changes." Bart's answer was as smooth as oil.

"Leave her alone," Turner said.

A heavy tread came from their right. Sam whirled to see Fourteen approaching through the pipes. She backed away, but when she turned to run, a tall mechbot blocked her way. She tried to duck past it, but it snapped out an arm and caught her around the waist.

"No!" Sam hit her fists against its body.

Turner ran toward her, but then Fourteen grabbed him from behind and held him in place.

"Come, Dr. Bryton." Bart's oily voice rolled from everywhere within the lab. "I've a surprise for you."

Sam fought hard, using her teeth, fingernails, and fists, and kicking with her legs, but Fourteen still shackled her down, on her back, stretching her out on a table used for biomech surgery. Her injured arm flared with pain as its bandage ripped off.

"Leave her alone!" Turner shouted. It took two of the large mechbots to clamp him into a mechanized chair, which locked robot arms around his torso, arms, and legs.

"Don't." Sam strained against the manacles that held her wrists and ankles to the table. "Don't do this."

A wall packed with mesh-tech rose up from the floor and curved around the table. One of its screens lit up, a panel that stretched the full height of the wall, seven feet. A life-sized holo of Bart formed in front of it so he seemed to be standing by the table.

"Hello, Dr. Bryton," he said.

"This is sick." She yanked on the restraints. "I haven't hurt any of you."

"You brought Charon into our facility."

"You brought him, damn it! You're the ones who invited Turner here."

Bart's gaze hardened. "Tell me, Doctor, how does it feel to be the one who is chained to the table?"

"Is that why you're doing this?" The pain in her injured arm made her eyes water. "You want revenge?"

Turner spoke desperately. "You must have seen her records. You know she's fought for our rights. She gave up a million-dollar salary because of it, for God's sake."

"Yes, we know what she did." Bart considered her. "It's the only reason I'm not killing you."

"You weren't hostile like this before." Sam calmed her voice. "Why hurt me now?"

"What makes you think we're going to hurt you?"

Sam flinched. "Oh, just this little thing of manacling me to a table used for biomech surgery."

"We're going to make you better." Bart nodded to Fourteen, who stood across the table. "Prepare her for surgery."

"NO!" Turner shouted.

An air syringe snicked out from Fourteen's finger.

Panic welled in Sam. "I don't want to die."

"It isn't death," Bart said. "No more than Charon died. People wanted him that way, but he outwitted them."

"You have Charon inside of you," Sam said. "That's why you're acting like this."

No answer.

"Listen," Turner said. "If you copied Charon from me, you know how he feels about her. He wouldn't want her harmed."

"Feels about me?" Sam went very still. "What does that mean?"

Turner started to answer, stopped, then said, "He admires you." Sam had no doubt he had a good deal more to say, none of it complimentary.

Bart studied her face. "As an android, you will always be beautiful, Dr. Bryton."

Desperate now, she said, "You don't have to do this. You can use imaging methods that don't destroy the brain."

"They don't give as precise a map," Bart said.

"Damn it, they do." Sam didn't know if that was true, but after all the decades of research, it had to be close.

No answer.

When Fourteen bent over her, Sam went crazy, thrashing against the bonds. He pressed the syringe against her neck and she cried out. It was the last thing she knew before darkness enveloped her world.

The worst fires had subsided, but flames continued to lick the rubble around them. Sam knelt in the debris, among the ashes and smoke, bending over her father. He lay so still, his eyes closed, his voice barely audible. "It's time to go . . ." 

"No." Tears poured down her face. "Don't go." 

"Good-bye, Sam . . ." 

Burned, everything burned. 

Her wrists burned, burned . . . 

Burned . . . 

Sam opened her eyes into a blur. She was lying on her back with her arms pulled over her head. The burning came from ropes that bound her wrists. Her legs were pulled tight and bound at the ankles. She wasn't in the lab, though; they had brought her back to her room and bound her to the bed.

Turner was sitting next to her, his face drawn. "Are you all right?"

"No." The injured arm had been healing before, but now it throbbed. "Did they—?"

"They haven't done it yet. After Fourteen knocked you out, they did physical exams." His voice shook. "I stopped them before they gave you the lethal injection."

"How?" She hated the tremor in her voice.

"I tried every argument I could think of. I think the one that worked was when I said if you didn't have your body, it would change how you thought, that the genius they want from you depends on your being human."

"Charon got to them."

"It looks like it. This is his style. Maybe he isn't going to kill you at all, just torment you, to assert his control." His fist clenched in the bed covers. "He sure as hell doesn't want you without your body."

She felt ill. "What did you mean, he likes me?"

"He's obsessed with you. Dr. Sam, beautiful, bold, and even smarter than him. He couldn't bear it. He fixated on you." Turner opened and closed his hands as if he didn't know what to do with them. "Bart still wants to make you into an EI. They want your expertise, forever. They just don't want to destroy it in the process."

"Why? To develop more of them?" She hated the thought.

"Develop, augment, improve."

She struggled to free her hands and pain ran up and down her arms. "Turner, untie me. This hurts."

"I already did once, while you were sleeping." He crumpled the quilt in his hand. "Fourteen came and redid the ropes. He says if I try again, they will separate us and hurt you more."

"We have to take the chance." Her arms ached.

"Sam—"

"Do it," she said softly. "I'm willing to chance it."

He nodded jerkily and bent over her. He worked first on the ropes holding her arms over her head, and it hurt like the blazes, but it was worth it when he freed her. He tackled her ankles next. As he pulled at the ropes, she slowly brought her arms down, stabs of pain shooting through them. Wincing, she let them rest by her sides.

After Turner finished with her legs, she turned onto her stomach and sprawled facedown on the bed. Her whole body hurt.

"Better?" he asked.

"Oh, yes." What an understatement. "How long was I unconscious?"

"About three hours."

When Sam felt steadier, she turned onto her side. No sign of Fourteen yet. She tried to focus, to think her way out of this. "Okay, they knock me out but let me live. I'm useful to them. But they can incorporate me better as an EI. And make me last longer."

"Yes." With revulsion, he added, "I'm their backup of Charon."

Sam had been thinking Charon corrupted the EIs here by leaking out of Turner's matrix, but what if they had deliberately absorbed him? She and Charon had a great deal of use to Sunrise Alley; between the two of them, they might well carry a substantial portion of human knowledge and innovation about biomech formas. If the reach of Sunrise Alley into the world mesh was as great as Bart implied, it could influence human economic, political, and social structures. The world was becoming more of a single community, with every country deep in the network. It had started in the days of the ARPAnet, BITNET, the Internet, exploded into the World Wide Web, and finally blended into the ubiquitous World Mesh, now just called "the mesh."

Overt political conflict had eased in recent decades as the many and varied peoples of the world communicated through the mesh. Interwoven, international communities formed when individuals discovered shared interests, bringing together many diverse groups. It had changed the face of human interaction, stirring hope that nations might find a commonality that superseded their conflicts. Hostilities never ceased, though. In the place of outright wars, they submerged into splinter groups that sought to topple governments, either their own or those of other countries. Their objectives were often unrealistic, but they caused bitter destruction in pursuing them.

The mesh allowed communication at a level previously unknown in history. Control the mesh and you controlled humanity.

Maybe Bart hadn't cared about that before, or maybe he had misled her, but his exposure to Charon had changed him. Bile rose in Sam's throat. "Charon is the reason you don't like to download yourself, isn't it? You're afraid he might escape from the trap in your matrix."

He said, simply, "Yes."

"How did you trap him?"

"He underestimated my will." Turner picked up a rope from the bed and twisted it in his hand. "He chose Turner Pascal because I was young, healthy, strong, handsome, and stupid. He figured I would be easy to control. When the time came for the transfer, he expected to have my knowledge about my body, my identity if he wanted it, and my mind as well as his own. A mental slave essentially, one too dim-witted to fight back." He set down the rope. "But I wasn't as easy to control as he thought."

"You aren't stupid."

"Sam—" He let out a breath. "I read at an eighth-grade level then. I couldn't remember the multiplication tables. I didn't even know Tibet existed." He tapped his temple. "Any intelligence you see comes from my EI."

"Your matrix is Turner's brain." She hated to see him denigrate himself. "Maybe you had a bad education. Besides, many types of intelligence exist. You underestimate yourself."

"I don't think so." His drawn expression eased. "But thank you."

Bart's voice suddenly came from the console. "I told you not to untie her again."

Turner looked around the room. "It was hurting her."

"Maybe that's the intent," Sam muttered.

They waited. When Bart said nothing more, Turner spoke to Sam. "Why would an EI want someone in pain?"

"You heard him in the lab. 'Tell me, Doctor, how does it feel to be the one who is chained to the table?' "

"Vengeance is a human emotion," Turner said.

"So he's simulating it." Still no other comments came from Bart. "Maybe he's like you and thinks he feels it."

"I don't think I feel. I feel."

"Why would he be different?"

"Bart was designed. I was already a person."

Sam could see his point. He knew the experience of emotions and why he felt them. Charon also knew, and he might be part of Bart.

"Turner, you said Charon knew me."

He wouldn't look at her. "Did I?"

"Yes, damn it. So why don't I recognize him?"

"I don't know."

"You must, if his brain is in your matrix."

"I've partitioned it off." His face paled. "I'm afraid if I try to access it, he will get free."

"Show me what he looks like."

Now he met her gaze. "And if you did recognize him? Would you really want to know a friend had betrayed you?"

She froze. "Are you saying he is a friend of mine?"

"No."

"Giles?" It couldn't be. It couldn't. But it made so much sense. He was one of the few biomech surgeons who could create a construct as phenomenal as Turner.

"Oh, Lord," she said miserably. "I should have seen."

"It isn't Giles."

"Then why won't you show me Charon?"

"Sam." He spoke with difficulty. "Let it go."

"No. Tell me."

After a long pause, he said, "All right."

She waited. "Yes?"

"His name is Linden Polk. You knew him at MIT."

Sam thought she must have misheard. "That can't be."

"I'm sorry." He sounded miserable.

It was absurd. Linden didn't have the genius to create Turner. He didn't do much surgery at all. His expertise was in the development of EI matrices, but his real gift was teaching. He had been a beloved advisor for many people, a decent, humble man. She could no more imagine him as Charon than she could imagine the sky turning orange. "That makes absolutely no sense."

Turner looked the way people did when they knew they had given bad news, with his face red and his gaze downcast. He believed Dr. Polk was Charon.

The console across the room crackled with Bart's voice. "I have decided you may leave her untied. Just make sure she doesn't leave."

Turner jerked. They waited a few moments, but Bart said nothing else. Sam closed her eyes and rolled onto her back, exhausted. That Bart didn't deny he was Polk just convinced her more that Turner was wrong. If Bart contained Charon, he probably wanted her misled about his identity.

After a few moments, Turner stretched out next to her. She rolled onto her side and pressed close to him, favoring her injured arm. Lying on his back, he pulled her into his arms. "That time you were unconscious—those were three of the worst hours I've ever spent."

"I'm all right, now." That was pushing it, but she did feel better. "Turner, did you see Charon die?"

"No."

"Who downloaded him to you?"

"His colleague, I assume."

"Linden?"

"No. Charon was Linden."

That just didn't fit. "It sounds like the process of transferring Charon's mind to your matrix went without a hitch."

"Yes. Shouldn't it?"

"It's one hell of a procedure." Sam pushed up on her elbow. "It would take a lot of work to get it right."

"Maybe. But I'm here." He looked up at her. "And Charon is definitely inside me."

"I'll bet you weren't the first one he tried the procedure on."

Turner went very still. "He never said."

"Maybe he was overconfident about his ability to control you because he had already done it with someone else." It hurt to think, let alone say, but she forced out the name. "Linden Polk."

Turner hesitated. "It's possible."

"Linden would have given him a remarkable intellect to work with. He was a gifted teacher, someone who always gave of himself to his students." It made too much painful sense. "That would have made it easier for Charon to take what he wanted."

"I'm sorry, Sam. I know Polk meant a lot to you."

Her eyes felt hot, but she couldn't answer.

"Do you think Charon let us go so we would lead him here?" Turner asked.

"I've wondered," she said. "But that Rex is a prize people would die for. I doubt he wanted to lose it. And why send a Needle after us if he wanted us to escape?"

"If he was the one who sent the Needle."

"Who else?"

"Maybe whatever government is supporting him?"

"China?" Sam considered the idea. "My guess is that it's a fringe group set against their government." The introduction of capitalist aspects into the Chinese economy over the past few decades had stirred heated controversy. "Either you bollixed Charon's plans when you trapped him in your matrix, or else he planned this and you don't really have him trapped."

"No!" He sat up, knocking her over. "I won't let him control me."

She sat up as well and took his hands. "Listen, Turner. It must be possible to remove Charon from your matrix."

"I was hoping you could help me."

"That was why you came to me." His story about the fingerprints and false identity had never convinced her. "To help you excise Charon."

"Yes." He spoke quietly. "I was afraid if I told you everything at the start, you would refuse."

She almost had anyway. But it wasn't in her nature to turn away those in need. That was why she and Linden had got on so well; they were a lot alike. Unfortunately for her survival in the cutthroat biomech industry, she had too much of that softness. "The EIs here must see the danger in Charon gaining access to my brain the way he tried to do with you. The expertise of a top EI analyst would give him more influence over Sunrise Alley."

Turner raised his voice. "You hear that, Bart? You want Charon loose? He's going to eat you alive."

Bart's voice came out of the console. "I suspect I would give him indigestion."

Sam gave a startled laugh. Then the door across the room opened, revealing Fourteen. He spoke in his rusty voice. "Come with me."

Sam thought of the surgical table. "I would rather not."

Fourteen entered, followed by two large mechbots. "You will come," Fourteen said. "Or we will sedate you."

"Don't do that." Sam wanted to stay conscious as long as possible—for these could be her last moments of life.