“No! I am independent. Circumstances have brought me here, yes, maybe as they intended, but I’ve acted alone in everything.”
“You know the secret of the GATE. You haven’t broadcast it yet. We know because we’ve deciphered and can interpret the carrier wave they’re using. But you’ve learned it. You ran it through a terminal." He gestured across the room. “That terminal. It’s been checked. No one knows how you managed to crack the codes so fast, but …”
“You forget that I worked for the company that designed many of the components,” Eric told him softly.
Uberaba nodded, looked satisfied. “So subtle. Subtle and patient. They function on a different time-scale than we do.”
“Let us go through the GATE,” Eric pleaded with him. “It’s ready. Just give us a second and let us go across to Eden. You know we can’t come back. The GATE’S a one-way trip to anonymity.”
“The Syrax probably have a good idea where Eden is located, and their ships are better than ours. They could go there, pick you up, and drain the information out of you. They’re very patient.”
“Patience won’t be enough,” Eric pointed out excitedly. “One of their starships would take a hundred years to reach Eden, even if they do know where it is.” He did not add that he was certain they did know, because, he realized suddenly, he knew. How did he know? It was part of his stored knowledge, information sequestered in the back of his brain that lay dormant until required.
What else did he know that he didn’t know he knew?
“I’d be dead by then and …” he stopped in midsentence and a look of puzzlement spread across his features.
There was a voice in his head, soft and feathery. Actually it wasn’t a voice so much as an aural projection. It wasn’t telepathy; the Syrax were not telepathic, but rather mind speaking to mind via an infinitesimally small communications device implanted in his skull.
He understood everything clearly. The voice was calm, polite, and friendly: everything the voice of a best friend ought to be. It told Eric what he had to do. Just push a little with this part of his brain. Push gently, there and thusly, and he and Lisa would be teleported to safety aboard the Syrax starship. Then they would be safe forever from the malicious, primitive actions of human beings and could live out their natural lives in comfort and peace. The Syrax saw nothing immoral in rewarding a device for a job well done.
Push, the voice urged reassuringly, just a little.
At the same instant the tiny monitor the bioengineer was showing Eric let out an electronic squeal. Uberaba and. Orema shouted simultaneously. Eric wasn’t certain what they said because he was too busy reacting.
The reaction was instinctive and involved a mind-push, utilizing another bit of information that had been thoughtfully stored in his brain. It was not a teleport-push, however. It jumped out from Eric toward his enemies, and they all went down, falling over one another like a box of toy soldiers.
It was quite a push, because as the security team collapsed, every readout in GATE Station went momentarily berserk and the lights flickered unsteadily. The colonists broke and ran, mothers carrying children, fathers trying to shield their families from the alien thing that stood next to the GATE.
The security team was very good, and despite the power of Eric’s defensive reaction a couple of them had managed to fire their weapons. One had shattered a relay in the ceiling before being stopped by the thick wall. Several members of the team were twitching like frogs in a biology lab. The bioengineer had fallen across Orema. Eric knew the paralysis wouldn’t last long, just as he knew it wasn’t fatal.
Lisa turned to look at the man she loved. “The GATE, Eric. While there’s still time.”
Behind him, the darkness beckoned. A glance showed no change in GATE status. It was still fully powered, still awaiting its next quotient of travelers. It wouldn’t stay that way much longer.
He remembered the soporific gas they’d used on him on the Nueva York to London flight. Here they’d like as not exhaust the atmosphere from this section of the city in order to protect the secret of the GATE. That would kill a large number of the screaming, panicky colonists who were trying to force their way back into the Departure Lounge, not to mention the technicians and scientists who sat cowering in their seats. One was moving fingers toward a switch, perhaps a power shutoff. Eric glanced at him and he fell forward onto his console. No one else raised a hand from where it lay. It occurred to him that they thought he’d killed Orema and his people.
Let them. For the moment it was nice to have fear on his side. Striding purposefully forward, he bent over Orema and pulled the needle gun from his fingers. He could see Orema’s eyes glaring up at him, unmoving in their sockets.
Then he turned slowly to face Lisa, who still stood waiting by the GATE. When she saw his arm rise she screamed and tried to reach him. He was much too quick for her.
With great precision and care he stuck the gun against his head and pulled the trigger.
Her scream degenerated into something sharp and feral, the first inhuman, purely artison sound he’d ever heard her make. She slammed into him with her hands flailing at the gun, but he’d already let it drop.
Then he calmly took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. Only a little blood trickled from the neat hole in his skull. Sobbing, she struggled to hold him up. Her sobs faded and her expression turned to one of astonishment when she realized he didn’t need the support.
Those who were still conscious stared blankly at him.
“It’s all right, Lisa. It’s already healing over.” Behind them the security guards were beginning to stir, hands groping for weapons, eyes jerking stiffly toward their target. They would not need orders from Orema this time to shoot to kill.
Eric ignored the activity. “They built me very well, gave me the best of human abilities as well as everything Syrax that could be put into a human body and brain. But they didn’t plan on me falling in love. You see, Lisa, they made me a little too human.” She was looking past his ear, toward the wound which was sealing itself much too quickly.
“There was a transmitter there. The transmitter the bioengineer referred to. Maybe it could function as a control unit as well. I didn’t want to find out. Now it’s gone. So are the Syrax. They were talking to me … here.” He touched his head near the wounds. “Now that’s gone, too.”
“They won’t give you up easily,” Lisa said. “They’ll come after you, attack the city …
“They might,” he replied as though it was no longer a matter of consequence, “but I doubt it. Of course, they wouldn’t want me taken prisoner either, but with the transmitter destroyed I don’t think they can touch me. Now we can go, Lisa.”
“Tambor series four. It doesn’t bother you?”
“Everybody should have a nickname. I’m sure you’ll think up a cute one for me.” He led her toward the GATE.
I am not a human being, he thought, and was pleased that the idea no longer troubled him, because he knew better.
“Ready,” he announced. There was a pause and he looked back at the technician monitoring the ultimate console.
“Ready, but you’re not supposed to …”
Orema raised the rifle he’d taken from the guard next to him and fired just as Lisa and Eric stepped into darkness. The energy bolt never reached them, went instead where spent energy went to die.
As they vanished, the little monitor lying next to the prone form of the bioengineer let out a sharp buzz, and a readout flashed all the way over into the red. Whether it signified Eric’s disappearance or represented some distant howl of alien rage, no one would ever know.
Parseconds, the newsawks dubbed travel time through the GATE, and they were not far off. Eric had taken off on his left foot and for a brief eternity it seemed the right one would never come down, would just continue lengthening until he boasted an inseam a light-year long.
But it did come down, contacting something hard and unyielding. He stumbled, felt Lisa stumble against him.
They stood in a room very different from the one at GATE Station. The walls were paneled with pressed wood. Real wood, of a quality only the wealthy could afford on Earth. Eric looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see Orema and his soldiers come tumbling through the GATE. But they were far away now, unimaginably far away.
