A FULL MOON showed its face to Earth—down there it was time for lovers to take pleasant strolls, or for harvests, or for serenades. But we weren’t down there. We were on the Darkside, in the cold. The only light was from faraway stars—cold and steady and uncaring—and the dim phosphorescence of transforming virus in culture media. Even that was inconstant. For an hour, the level of media had been dropping. The tank was almost drained now—only a little sloshed at my feet.
Both my transformation and training were complete. I was a full-fledged combat hybrid now. Soon I could start the second part of my plan.
You haven’t quite figured it out yet, have you? There’s one more part to tell. Then you’ll know it all.
The lid popped off my chamber. I clambered out easily. All around, other combrids climbed from their tanks, like a cohort of wasps hatching from their hive. We leaped to the ground. Lunar dust puffed around our feet.
We stood in orderly rows on the Lunar plain, buck naked. In vacuum. In cold a hundred below. No spacesuits. No oxygen masks. We were combrids. There was enough oxygen stored in our brown adipose to last for an hour. The same layer of special fat insulated against the cold. Skin reinforced with polymer mesh and glistening with monomer sweat was impervious to vacuum. Nictitating membranes and internal sphincters protected more delicate tissues.
A gunnery sergeant stood before us, dressed in combat armor. Human eyes might not have seen him. Camofilm on the outside of his battle dress blended perfectly with the moonscape. But human eyes were not looking at him.
He laughed. We heard it in our minds, picked up by sensors embedded there. “Welcome to the Corps, meat!” he shouted. “You ain’t civilians anymore. You is meat now. Corps meat. You ain’t never going back to Earth, so don’t think different. The only way you is ever going back is on the meat wagon.” He pointed upward. We all looked in unison. The gravtug with its string of pods passed overhead, almost low enough to reach by jumping. On its final orbit, then. The face I was fleeing flashed into my mind: frozen eyes, icicle teeth, frost thick as blue fur. I shivered, but I wasn’t cold.
The Gunny continued his welcome speech: “If you have anybody back there that cares for you—and I doubt you do—forget about them. You ain’t never going to see them again. If you got an old lady or an old man, forget about them. They be all right without you. Old Jody will take care of them. You’ll never see them again, anyway. You done sold your soul to the Corps. The Corps gonna be mama and papa to you. You gonna get fat eating that good Corps food. If you gonna get laid, the Corps gonna do it.” He laughed again. “Anybody here want to run? Anybody homesick? Anybody want to take off, now’s the time. The Corps don’t want no rabbits. Want to run? That’s OK. Go ahead. Nobody stop you.” He waited, hands on hips. “One last time. You gonna run, you better do it now. You got enough air in your body to last an hour. You might make it someplace. You might not. But this is your last chance to run. You try it later, the spooks come after you. You won’t like that.” He waited, No one moved from the ranks. I was in no particular hurry to run myself. I had to make it to Titan before I ran. A miner named Nels waited for me there. He was going to tell me something. May as well let the Corps pay my passage.
Besides, I had no other choice. Not then, anyway. I was as good as dead, unless I could change the time matrix. I wasn’t sure fate could be changed. But you can bet I was going to try. I mean, what did I have to lose?
Have you figured it out yet? All the clues are there to be fitted together. You need some more help. OK. We have time for one more story before we go.
* * *
I was about to take the Plunge. The famed ski run dropped below me—a steep, narrow chute leading straight off the top of the mountain. The lights of Telluride were below, as bright as peptide dreams. Stars winked overhead. The ski slopes themselves were lit by luminescent snow. Though it was Midsummer’s Eve, the air at three thousand meters held a chill. Snow machines already spewed glowing powder from their nozzles.
I pushed myself off the lip, cutting through the glowing wake that marked another skier’s passage. This was my last run. I had business to attend to. I planned to make a little after-hours withdrawal from the Bank of Telluride.
After getting rid of my parents and leaving Grychn, my life took a turn for the better. The varks never did figure out I’d killed them. Grychn never betrayed our secret. They were officially victims of suicide. I became a minor success. Having the timestone helped. A little research at the library enabled me to figure out that it was a chronotropic crystal—a type of living gem that could manipulate time. The concept was logical enough. There were radianuclear crystals that could transduce every other kind of energy. Why not time? Though predicted on a theoretical basis for years, no one had yet been able to grow one. Well, somone had. Because I had a chip of one.
It really was quite useful. Not only could it provide glimpses of the future, but you could also change the future around a little, simply by willing it so. Not a lot of change, but enough for my purposes. Enough to make dice come up the way you wanted. Or cards. Or to be sure a little round ball fell in the right slot.
I was able to make quite a name for myself in sporting circles. And accumulate quite a hoard of cash. I had my own group of sycophants living on my own estate. The good life was mine.
But that’s never enough, is it? I became bored. Winning games of chance wasn’t fun if you took away the chance. But I found the timestone could also be used to make computer locks open a little early or to help electronic tumblers drop into place.
I wasn’t content being the system’s highest roller. I also had to be its most flamboyant cat burglar.
The timestone let me be both. There was only one problem with it—you could see more than you wanted to see. If you wanted to know the way you were going to die, it would show you. I’d seen a scenario of my own death once. That was enough, thank you. I wanted to live, not spend my life fleeing death. I’d take my chances not knowing the shape of destiny. But the temptation to know was almost irresistible. I had to keep firm control on my mind. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as the sailor. Not me. I intended to use the timestone, not let it manipulate me. But frogs, I was tempted more than once to see myself dead again.
Where was I? I sometimes ramble. Ah, yes. The system’s most flagrant thief. I found the thrill in crime was to be able to pull off impossible capers, in front of witnesses. Then laugh when the varks tried to figure out how the job was done and who did it. I guess the timestone made me a little cocky.
So there I was, cutting tight S-turns down the Plunge, planning to rob the Bank of Telluride, in front of witnesses.
When I reached the bottom, I stacked my skis on a rack and ducked into a public dressing room. I’d rented a locker there that morning. In a private booth, I took off my ski boots and body stocking and put on formal slippers and briefs. I fastened on a jeweled chain-mail corset, then clasped an evening cape about my shoulders.
I was ready for the night’s activities.
I crossed Saint Michael’s River. On the other side was Shadowtown. I passed a row of cribhouses. Pathics sat naked on open balconies. Their voices called to me as I passed. Mental fingers caressed me at first, then tugged at my hands as I continued walking. I closed my mind tight. I didn’t need their particular perversions. Not tonight, anyway.
The sidewalks were jammed with tourists. This was the week of the Gravglider Festival. Thousands of gliding aficionados were in Telluride to watch their heroes dash themselves to pieces in midair duels. I had counted on it being crowded. Tonight was also the grand opening of the Bank of Telluride’s new Pandora Tower. I’d promised them they’d be robbed tonight. It would be more exciting if they were warned. I wouldn’t want them to be disappointed.
I wandered past peptide parlors and mnemone dens, blending into the crowd, I knew undercover varks were scattered all around. They had been trying to catch me for a long time. A real shame they didn’t know who I was. I turned east on Main. Laughter rose from basement stairwells, with wisps of smoke and swirling fumes. I walked on. Those perversions were not for me, either.
I could see the tower now, floating above the ruins of an ancient mine. It rose two thousand meters above the floor of the canyon. Beyond, molten sodium splashed down a three-hundred-meter cliff. A plain waterfall had been deemed too ordinary. But real snow dusted high mountaintops.
Security was tight at the bottom of Pandora Tower, though a casual observer would have thought it nonexistent. To untrained eyes, there was only a single doorman checking invitation cards. But I noticed the other varks. You could tell by their eyes; they were too interested in what was happening around them. Let them have their interest; it would do them no good in catching me.
I handed the doorman my invitation. He let me pass without comment. And why not? It was a legitimate invitation. I was a legitimate guest. I had made a substantial deposit to the bank. I hoped to make an even larger withdrawal. I stepped into a liftube and was whisked upward along the outside of the tower. I rose past sheer cliffs carved by glaciers millennia ago and soon even topped the four-thousand-meter summits of Telluride Peak and Mount Silver. Wind whipped ice crystals against the wall of the liftube. Only the stars and Club Ionosphere were above me.
The liftube opened into the club. I stepped through a doorfield and was in. Lords and Ladies milled about, sipping wine and smoking aromatic herbs. Sonic jewelry sang from ears, noses, fingers, and toes. Naked skin gleamed with synthetic sweat.
Servants circulated among the guests, carrying trays laden with comestibles and intoxicants. I waved one away. I wanted a clear head tonight. I meandered about, apparently as aimless as the other guests. I engaged in meaningless conversations, laughed empty laughter. All the time I made my way to the center of Club Ionosphere.
Several faces were known to me: Miguel Teller, body merchant and proprietor of the original hybrid shop in nearby Ophir, was with Dolores Silver, his sometime companion and gene futures entrepreneur. Carmen Mendoza had attracted her usual crowd. I only nodded or smiled or muttered a greeting. I didn’t want to get tied up in a prolonged conversation. Varks were scattered about, of course. But they were easy for me to spot.
Finally, I reached my goal. A clear cylinder about a meter in diameter ran from ceiling to floor in the middle of the room. It was a fiber optic bundle. One end opened on the top of Pandora Tower, where it received data beamed by laser from orbiting satellites. The other end fed this data to the bank’s computers in the old mine tunnels beneath the tower. The Bank of Telluride was a central clearinghouse for this hemisphere. Or it would be when the system became operational. Which would be in about five minutes. The bank’s president was already giving his ceremonial speech. I shut him out. I didn’t need to listen to speeches.
A hand touched my shoulder. I turned. She’d changed to a formal gown, but I recognized her. I’d seen her skiing earlier that day. She wasn’t someone you’d easily forget. Gossamer spider-silk cascaded about her shoulders, showing lots of brown skin through it. A string of singing pearls circled her neck, glowing white hot. I remembered green eyes. And the image of her nice ass bobbing up and down over moguls as she skied.
“What’s so fascinating about that glass column?” she asked. “You’ve been staring into it for five minutes.”
“You’ll see in a few minutes.” I smiled. But I’d been careless. Too obvious. There were varks all over. The woman would be good cover. Nothing unusual about talking to her. Besides, there was lots of scenery revealed by her flimsy gown. I smiled my most charming smile and eyed her breasts. Not bad. The parts below were all right, too.
She pretended she didn’t notice me looking at her. But she smiled back. “I saw you on top of the hill today.” She laughed. “Looks like you made it down in one piece.” She looked closely at me, “I thought you looked familiar. I’ve seen you in the holos. You’re a gambler, aren’t you?”
“That’s me, Marc Detrs. Boy wonder of the casinos.” I handed her my card—the one with the pair of dice that always came up sevens.
“My name is Michele Kramr.” She smiled again. “What’s a gambler doing at the opening of a bank? There’re no risks to be taken here.”
“I like to be close to money. And you?”
“I came for the free refreshments. And so people wouldn’t gossip about me.”
There was another reason, left unsaid. I knew she’d take my offer. As soon as I completed my business, I’d tender one.
Now was the time for my withdrawal. The bank’s president had finished his speech. He signaled for the lights to be turned off. Darkness surrounded us.
Stars were visible through the transparent ceiling of Club Ionosphere. Directly overhead was the brighter star of a comsat. A red beam stabbed down from the sky, striking the vertex of the tower. The fiber optic column next to me filled with laser light, sparkling like ruby sand in an hourglass. The crowd oo’d and ah’d. All except me. I had business to attend to.
Did you forget I wore a timestone on my finger? It was a useful little gadget. Each of the tiny optical fibers in the column represented around five hundred accounts. Laser light modulated the activity of those accounts. Each beam of laser light was only a photon across. Once they got in an optical fiber, they stayed there. The comsat was aligned very precisely to achieve this. But a photon wasn’t very big. It was just the right size for my timestone to manipulate. I could change probability a little with it—twist the wires of coherent light a little, and make a few photons hit a few wires of my choosing.
One of the fibers was mine, representing my account. It was child’s play to pad my balance out a little. There was no way to trace it or to even know it was being done. Digits flashed from the chargering on my other hand, marking my steadily increasing bank balance. The bank would know that they had been swindled—more had gone out than had come in. They would know they’d been robbed, but they wouldn’t know how. They would know who had done it—I’d told them I would. Only they didn’t know who I was. Pretty clever, no?
Like I said, child’s play. Photons were easy to move about. In just a few minutes, I’d siphoned off several million credits. My chargering’s digits changed so fast, its register glowed a solid green.
All the time I kept up an inane conversation with the woman standing beside me, setting her up for some night games afterward. I didn’t notice the way she also watched my chargering. But I did notice the hand signal she made.
Too late an image flashed in my mind: me with a set of sonicuffs around my wrists. I looked about in alarm. A couple of varks guarded each exit. The rest were unobtrusively moving toward me. The woman Michele had fingered me. She wasn’t a vark. I could smell varks. I didn’t have time to figure out what she was. I had to get away.
I slipped into the crowd, making my way to the far wall. There wasn’t a door there, so there were no varks, either. They took their time following me, sure I couldn’t escape. They thought they had me this time.
I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d made a few contingency plans myself.
As I worked my way through the crowd, I got ready. I tried not to think too much about what I was going to do. I had no other choice, so there was no point worrying about it. I knelt briefly and fastened each corner of my cape to my slippers at the ankle. I slipped the shoulder clasps over each wrist. Then I pulled out a flat piece of plastique from its hiding place under my corset and worked it into a round ball.
The varks were holding back, waiting until they were all in position. Michele seemed to be directing things. They were in no hurry, figuring they had me trapped. Indeed, they did. The transparent wall of Club Ionosphere had no doors or windows. Besides, beyond the wall was two thousand meters of sheer drop. I felt like the proverbial cornered rat.
So I did what I had to do.
I threw the ball of plastique impact explosive at the wall, at the same time dropping to the floor and covering my head. A deafening explosion sounded. Flame tickled the hairs on my neck. As soon as the tickling stopped, I jumped to my feet and ran forward. A meter-wide hole gaped in the wall. Cold wind, roared in through it. Without looking back, I dove headfirst through the opening. Once beyond the edges of the wall, I spread my arms and legs into a skydiver’s frog. Air billowed under my cape, ballooning it into a parawing that both slowed my fall and provided forward thrust. I could steer by moving my arms and legs. Although I didn’t have as good a glide coefficient as I would with a real hang glider, I could still go a long way with a two-thousand-meter start. At least as far as Ophir, where my skimmer was hidden.
I spilled air out of one side of my cape and began circling around the tower. Wind streamed past, chilling bare skin. Snow rustled against taut fabric. The lights of Telluride glowed far below, colder than the stars overhead. Brighter light blazed through the crystal pyramid of Club Ionosphere. Figures appeared in the hole I’d blasted. Faces peered out into darkness.
I stared into the timestone I still wore on my left hand, letting its warmth fill my mind. I was going to need its help. Eventually the varks would spot me.
I twisted to the right. A pulsar beam cracked the air where I’d been a moment before, just as the timestone had warned me it would. More beams flashed past, barely missing me. Even with the timestone’s help, it was hard to dodge the beams of six hand pulsars taking target practice at me. But without the timestone, it would not have been possible.
I think I could have made it if the stone had not betrayed me. I was almost out of range of their handguns. In a few more seconds, I would have been. Then an image came unbidden to my mind, I tried to push it back to the depths of the timestone and found I could not. A face filled my mind’s eye—my face, frozen solid, eyes bursting from ice inside them, teeth shattered from the cold, skin covered with frost as delicate as white fungus. I could not look away. The death mask pushed away the images of pulsar beams I should have been concentrating on.
Pulsar quanta came closer. The air cracked with their ionization energy. Then there was a different sound—a splattering sound, like a red-hot brand drenched in water. Only I had my left hand around that brand. I could not let go.
Suddenly the face in my mind was gone. But so were all the other images. Cold vacuum sucked at my mind.
I looked at my left hand. It wasn’t there. All I could see was the fading contrail of a pulsar beam and a puff of vapor already dissipating into the wind. A sphere of white smoke was all that remained of my hand. And of the timestone. It also was vapor.
My cape had fallen off my wrist and flapped free. I couldn’t grab it with a bloody stump. Damn annoying. With only three anchors, the wing had lost considerable lift and was uncontrollable. I fell to earth in a tight spiral. Below me were ski runs winding down through dark forest like lava flows. I tried to maneuver myself over one of the slopes. I was going to hit hard. Maybe the snow would soften my impact.
Then I remembered my death mask. I was destined to freeze to death. I would die in ice. That grim, unwanted knowledge was now mine. I wondered if I should head for the trees instead.
Glowing snow neared. Would it be here, now? Would I freeze on the ski slope before the varks found me, buried in synthetic snow? Maybe, But there wasn’t much I could do. If I went into the trees I’d be killed for sure. I didn’t need a timestone to know that. A steep, snow-covered slope was close beneath. I bent my legs and turned upright in the air. Dogs, I was going fast. This was going to hurt.
As I hit, I rolIed forward. Snow exploded around me. I almost chuckled from a wry thought. I knew I would survive the impact. The timestone had told me as much. The only question was whether or not I would freeze to death in the snow afterward.
I felt a sharp crack on my head. Darkness closed over me. I might not ever know that answer.
* * *
I didn’t freeze to death. You knew that I woke in a hospital bed, sore all over. There was no serious damage. In a few days, I was transferred to jail. A few more days, and my trial began. You probably remember it. The holos had a lot of fun with me: scion son of nobility, playboy gambler, daring master thief. The networks went out of their way to show all the robberies I’d committed that had completely baffled the varks. They loved making the authorities out to be buffoons. The public loved watching it. I became a media event for the few days of my trial.
Of course I was found guilty. But only for one count of fraud against the Bank of Telluride. They couldn’t prove anything else. And they didn’t know how I’d siphoned off millions from the bank. The prosecution’s star witness was Major Michele Kramr, on loan to the varks from the Intelligence Corps. I almost crapped when I found that out, remembering that I’d once snuffed a spook. Apparently they failed to make the connection. But so did I. I’m sure you have. Michele testified about me standing next to the fiber column and watching my chargering registering. The bank could verify that my account got fatter as others got leaner. They didn’t need to prove how I did it, only that I had. They did. Which made me guilty.
Not that I put up a spirited defense. It didn’t seem to matter. Nothing mattered anymore. My timestone was gone. I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. I even figured out where it would be. I was destined to freeze to death. I knew that the punishment for fraud would be a year or two at a prison farm. Big deal, you say. Well, get this—the prison farms are located in Antarctica. You know, the icebox of the world.
So naturally I was found guilty. Just as certainly I would be sent to a prison farm. There I would most definitely die. Fate must be consummated. There was nothing I could do about it. Only a timestone could manipulate the time matrix. My timestone was gone.
So I was in a rather grim mood as I lay in my cell on the eve of my sentencing. I knew a hand-slap punishment would be a death sentence for me. I wasn’t even cheered up by watching the coverage of my trial on the halo. I was that depressed.
The war news came on next. I didn’t bother to turn it off. Tonight the coverage came from Titan, where the elves had launched another offensive against Chronus. They showed footage of the “bombardment.” None of the elven pulsar beams even made it through the city’s force-field. Life there went on as notoriously as usual. Patrons still frequented the famed mindcasinos.
Suddenly I remembered something. I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier. The sailor had told me it as he died. I’d forgotten about the miner, Nels. And the other timestone. The holo scenes from Chronus reminded me. There was another timestone. Nels knew where it was hidden. He could be found among the mindriders of Chronus. Maybe I could cheat fate if I could locate the other timestone. I had done that once before. It might work again. But how was I going to get to Titan? I was going to be sent to Antarctica. As I watched elves eluding Terran combrids in forests of glass, the solution came to me. Quite simple, really. There was only one way, I had no other choice.
The next day, before the judge could sentence me, I asked him to let me volunteer for the Combrid Corps. The request was a formality, He couldn’t refuse me. Any citizen had the right to go to the Combrid Corps in lieu of any other criminal penalty. Normally, joining the Corps was the alternative to capital punishment. But it could be substituted for lesser punishments as well.
I can still remember the surprised look on the Lord Judge’s face when he granted my request. He must have thought me mad to trade a year or two on a prison farm for six years in the Corps. Less than one percent of combrids survived their tour of duty. The average life span was closer to two months. But I knew going to a prison farm in Antarctica was the same as a death sentence for me. There was only one way for me to cheat that destiny. I had no other choice.
But still, I had to smirk every time I saw myself reflected from the inside wall of my hybridization tank. My plan was clever, no doubt about it. Even if I couldn’t find the other timestone, I might thwart the time matrix. By becoming a combat hybrid, I was changing myself into another creature entirely. More than just superficial appearance. Even my genes were different. I was not the same being as I had been; I was no longer the same as the dead face the timestone had planted in my mind.
So now you know the whole plan. Pretty smart, eh?
Now I just had to get out of the Corps before I got my new self killed. And I had to come up with some way to get that dead face out of my thoughts. It was giving me the creeps.