‘Raiya,’ came the voice out of the darkness, a familiar voice. It was Leonard Heigener.
The light increased now. A series of blue-white wide focused beams overhead, on her face. She was recumbent on a surgical couch. She wasn’t restrained but she couldn’t move a muscle
‘Len?’ She rasped. The effort to even say his name.
‘Raiya, I can’t tell you how sorry I am that it has come to this.’ He actually sounded sincere.
‘Come to what?’ she managed.
‘To the point where we would have to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Those who care about the security of this planet.’
She was now getting the impression that Leonard Heigener was not in his right mind. She had suspected for a while something was wrong with him, if only she could make that definitive judgement – in the way that would be so easily done with anyone else; but with him there had always been that blind spot. I didn't want acknowledge it, she thought.
She said, ‘Len. How can you believe I am a threat to the security of this planet?’
‘Because of the knowledge you carry. In the wrong hands that knowledge will cause panic, terror. Even if you don’t tell them, they will find out, they will follow you.’
‘Who, Len?’
‘The very people you have been studying – the Transcenders.’
‘But hardly anyone except their small number of followers would ever take them seriously.’
‘You know them better than that, Raiya. You know that they have the ear of an increasingly sensationalist media – that they take the rumours and add evidence: pictures, recovered debris.’
‘People will just get on with their lives, until there's some official announcement. Nothing need change.’
‘But it is, Raiya, isn’t it. Everything’s changing.’
She said, ‘Len, I think you’ve been working too hard. You need a break.’
‘Don’t tell me what I need,’ he snapped back at her. ‘I am not the one who's ruled by the vagueries of a case subject, who becomes emotionally involved to the point where all rational judgment ceases.’
‘I know what this is all about,’ she said with a forced calm. ‘Let’s be upfront with each other. You want it to happen, for everything to end. Somehow they have got to you, twisted your mind, made you lose yourself – the man I used to know, respect ... and love.’
‘For a psychiatrist your understanding is somewhat rudimentary.’
‘I understand that the old Leonard Heigener is lost. And now, whoever – what ever you are, is now intolerable to you. At least, if there is a shred of the old Leonard still there, he could not bear it.’ She then added: ‘If only I had the chance to find that man who was so kind and warm---’
‘That’s it,’ declared Heigener. ‘I’m done with you now.’ He then stepped back.
Someone else approached her, a man all too familiar ... and feared.
*
Since time was of the essence Roidon agreed that they should allow the craft to approach Earth at its maximum speed. Even with inertial compensators the forces inflicted on the two were enough to render Roidon unconscious. Torbin, with the benefit if his artificial body, felt the juddering as a mild discomfort.
They approached the location where Raiya had landed in Minnesota. Torbin had to instruct the computer to take them to somewhere less conspicuous.
In a wooded area about two kilometres away Torbin set out. He simply left Roidon in his passenger seat, as the man was beginning to come to. Torbin could reach the location in a fraction of the time it would take were he to keep back a pace for Roidon. It was the logical decision.
The trouble with being a 2.1 metre tall mechanical man is the tendency to be conspicuous, Torbin realised, even in this sparsely populated region. His tritanium form glinted in intermittent bursts as he ran in the June sun. It reminded him of something uncomfortable, an image from his memory. The Elusivers had made him witness a nightmare future: shiny mechanoids with wide pumping legs; machines that didn’t just kill but assimilated people into their bodies as swiftly as a lizard takes in an insect. Now he was moving with that machine efficiency for those few kilometres.
In less than a minute Torbin had reached his destination. He surveyed a farmhouse-style building looming over the grounds in which Roidon's commandeered craft was parked. Now doubts were beginning to creep into his mind that he could not quite present into logical reasoning.
There were no obvious reasons for suspicion: no other vehicles. And even though this place looked benignly rustic, Torbin was sure he was being monitored. Yet, for lack of any apparent dangers, he continued on.
The door was not typical of a farmhouse: it had a comm system. To the side, a gold engraved plaque, which simply read: Institute of psychiatry.
Torbin felt a mote of relief; Raiya had returned to her place of work, it made perfect sense now. She’d wanted to return without questions or arguments; maybe just quietly slip back into her old life. Whatever her motives, Roidon was sure to have objected to his latest lover taking his craft, and some knowledge of his plan.
The question remained: should he announce his presence, just as any visitor?
Torbin stood by the entrance for a few minutes, analysing the faint hint of doubt troubling his mind, before he put his metal finger on the comm-pad. He said, ‘Hello Raiya, it’s Torbin. Are you there?’ He felt mildly ridiculous having to state what she'd doubtless already knew, although he guessed that most scanning technology could not examine his artificial form.
‘Hello, Torbin. I am rather busy at the moment. But you can come in.’ There was a cheeriness to her voice that seemed somehow odd to him.
‘Thank you.’ The thought in his mind: does she consider me to be a true friend?
He heard the lock on the door release, and strode through, acutely aware of the swooshing and whining servos pumping him along in what felt like an ungainly manner.
There was what seemed to be reception desk but with no one attending. He continued on along a corridor, passing one door with a plaque for Dr L. Heigener. And then: Dr Raiya Fortenski, Research psychologist. He knocked on the old oak door.
‘Enter,’ came her voice, more abrupt than he had expected.
He carefully pushed the door open, conscious of how easy it would be break it off its hinges. It took a few seconds before he located her. She was recumbent on a couch, completely motionless, until she raised her head.
‘Torbin.’ She said his name in such a strained and desperate way that he knew something to be very wrong.
But before he could even speak to her he felt the most immense and crippling pain. Then: balance gone, no proprioception. His legs crumpled under him as if the strings had been cut on a marionette. The pain in his head was such that his vision had blurred, but he was still able to make out the form of the creature standing above him. He knew immediately it was not the exile Elusiver but the enemy. It was holding a device, pointing towards Torbin, inflicting the pain.
Its voice reached into his head as if patterned in the form of pain: ‘You will tell us everything, Torbin. Everything!’
The room faded, as the agony subsided.
*
Roidon, now fully alert – and with only a moderate headache as the analgesics took effect – hefted his gillet-jacket off the passenger seat. Serious kit: Kevlar and titanium construction with an integrated cooling system (he wasn’t going to bear unnecessary discomfort on a warm June day). Yet the majority of its weight was due to an effective arsenal of lethal weapons, filling the various pockets: guns, neutron grenades that could eliminate any living being within a kilometre radius, the largest of which: no bigger than his hand. The computer array weighed barely two grams. He hadn’t left the base without the expectation of trouble, or even conflict. Torbin, on the other hand, was confident in his own unarmed mechanised self.
When Torbin had set off alone on his rescue mission, Roidon was drifting between a state of unconsciousness and a vague dreamlike awareness that his compatriot was about to do something foolhardy.
Almost an hour had gone by since Torbin had left. Roidon donned the jacket, its substantial weight a reassuring presence. He left the craft to find its own hiding place, a considerable distance away, and ran towards the location of his original craft.
Standing behind a wall to the farmhouse, Roidon’s computer was feeding scanning data into his retinas. It would tell him anything about the number of occupants; there seemed to be some kind of field surrounding one particular room, not something a standard AI would pick up on or alert him to. Now it was obvious what had happened.
He figured there was only one way to enter this building: all guns blazing. At best he could target the enemy. At worst it would result in the death of anyone of flesh and blood including himself. As soon at he got to within the grounds, they’d know. So he had to act without sentiment, without hesitation; information of an extremely crucial nature was surely being extracted.
Yet he hesitated, considered the loss of life … the loss of her life. Considered that this all could have been avoided if he’d not been so absorbed in his work.
Too late for that now, Roidon. In any case, if what he’d learned about the Elusivers turned out to be correct then they would show no mercy in interrogation, if they even bothered with that rather than a mind trawl.
The only logical course of action was plain before him.
Still, something was holding him back. He stopped behind part of a wall that ended to a driveway, nearest the B'tari craft. This hesitation was for no other reason than human sentiment (the word hesitation repeated in his mind as a cruel taunt). It was likely Torbin would survive if he remained encased within his metal body. Raiya’s death, however, was not guaranteed to be a swift one.
Her dying – what did it mean most? The loss of a lover? There would certainly be many others, younger, prettier. The loss of friend? He did value her friendship, but moreover he valued her empathy: When they were most intimate she seemed in tune with him, as if she could know his mind. That was imagined, of course, but at the time his endorphin-filled mind convinced him this was true; the only one who ever gave him that illusion. He understood entirely Torbin’s infatuation with her: the belief he has in someone who may truly understand. If Torbin survived, he would never forgive Roidon for causing her death. That man, despite his intelligence, was unlikely to see beyond his emotions. Roidon had no choice now but to see beyond his own emotions, to put those emotional ties aside for the greater good.
So he removed a neutron grenade from his utility belt, primed its remote detonator; threw it towards the main building, then ran towards the B'tari craft.
Just as Roidon was about to send a detonation thought pattern to the grenade, he noticed there was someone standing before the craft. Someone he recognised.
Zardino held aloft the grenade as though it were a baseball he had just caught. He said, ‘I could have left you to your flawless tactic … and end up bitter twisted for wasting innocent lives. But I decided that cold logic is not always best.’
Roidon was at once aggravated and relieved. ‘Just testing what it would take to make you show up again,’ he lied.
‘Well, you seemed to have been doing fine on your own ... at least up until this point.’
‘Extreme circumstances, and all that.’ He said quickly.
‘Mnn ... what to do,’ Zardino said, sounding irritatingly unfazed by the situation, as if there were not really lives and the entire planet’s future at stake.
‘Don’t tell me: you’re running through what is acceptable according to that damn directive of yours.’
‘Wait in the craft,’ he said, realising there was little time for such a consideration. ‘I may not return, but I believe the others will.’
‘You think you can trade your life for theirs?’
‘I have much information that will be valuable to the enemy.’
‘And they believe you will offer that up?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. We both know that’s unlikely, since you lot are able to resist their mindscans – I’m sure. So that leaves only one other option. I go. And once they are released, you’ll know what to do.’
Zardino nodded gently like a Zen master ‘Time to be a hero, Roidon.’
Roidon strode away with a briskness that denied the opportunity of any farewell. Just a soldier doing his duty, as far as the B'tari were concerned – an expendable asset. It seemed obvious now that Zardino had no intention of going in that building; Roidon knew he was being played, albeit by a mutual understanding.
As he approached the main entrance Roidon imagined his form being analysed, the enemy determining his value. He put his finger on the door comm and waited.
‘Please state the purpose for your visit.’ A male voice, no detectable accent.
‘I wish to trade myself for your prisoners.’
There was silence for a while; Roidon half-expected a derisory laugh of the classic villain, but it didn’t come.
Eventually: ‘Prisoners?’
‘I know you have them; the masking field is not effective against my technology.’
‘Roidon Chanley, why would you offer yourself up if this was not some kind of ruse?’
‘My information is more valuable than your two prisoners.’
‘Then where is the logic in what you propose? Surely this is about more than the lives of two humans?’
‘It is about the life of the woman I love.’
Now came the much anticipated laugh, though not quite as villainous as he expected, more muted. Then: ‘You expect me to believe that? Roidon Chanley sacrificing himself for a woman – out of love?’ The voice reeked with cynicism, and the presumption clearly intended to be antagonising.
‘I am prepared to risk that even with my knowledge you will not be able to stop what has already begun. Without it, you haven’t a hope.’
‘Interesting. But how do you know that once you enter I would honour my side of the deal?’
‘If you don’t, I will resist the mindscan with every ounce of my being.’
Without another word the door opened. As soon as Roidon stepped through he was grabbed by the arm, then frogmarched along a corridor so dark he could barely identify anything about the being – human or not – other than he was roughly Roidon’s height, masked and carrying a gun.
After about forty wordless seconds they arrived at a room that looked like an office, but equipped more like an operating theatre: spot lights positioned over the woman he knew to be Raiya, recumbent on a couch. The lights were so bright it was clear why she could barely open her eyes without being blinded. At the other side of the room sat the metal figure of Torbin. The chair he sat in, even more incongruous: dark metal cross panels, designed for strength. Thick steel cuff locks, a chest brace and his servo powered legs – equally secured. But there were also cables attached to him at various points. Neither of the two were moving, as if unconscious.
Another masked man, taller and thinner, approached him. He said, ‘Are you prepared to submit yourself for a mind trawl?’ He might as well have been asking if he wanted a drink, for the matter-of-fact enquiring tone.
‘If you let them go, you can scan every nanometre of my mind.’ Roidon surveyed about the room. ‘In any case, there doesn’t seem to be enough equipment for a third recipient,’ he observed.
‘In … any case they were no more than bargaining chips.’ He released the restrains from Torbin; the assistant hefted his body onto a trolley and wheeled him out. ‘Don’t worry,’ the man continued, ‘He is merely unconscious, though he will wake up confused and amnesic. Likewise for your girlfriend. Your arrival, however, has saved them from any permanent brain damage.’
Once Raiya had also been carried out, Roidon was told to sit on the chair.
‘Actually,’ the being said, once the restraints had been locked. ‘Any resistance will be futile. And you may not survive.’
Roidon, with an electrode frame over his head, began to feel the intrusive pressure of the process. Surely any second now this place would blow to smithereens, or at least something akin to his neutron grenade to take out every living being.
But he continued waiting, the pressure increasing, his mind being forced to bring up images of the last few days, his work, his time with Raiya, it was laid out for them as if his mind were a flash drive to be plundered at will.
Had Zardino been detected, prevented? Or had he no intention of delivering on the only logical course of action? Roidon’s broken mind could not possibly determine.
*
When he opened his eyes he saw shapes that were meaningless for a few seconds, until they then became recognised as flowers and trees, like a garden, only bigger. But he wasn't alone. A woman's voice nearby; distressed. She was saying, ‘Who are you?’ with some expression.
He wasn't sure, which was the curious thing. He didn't recognise the woman either. But when he looked down at himself, he gasped in much the same way as the woman had. He was not a man at all. This machine body was like something he had seen in a movie he couldn't quite name, it was at once hideous and magnificent. Only one explanation then: this must be a dream. Perhaps the woman was someone he had to save.
He told her not to be alarmed, that he would help her.
She said, ‘Leave me the hell alone,’ quite emphatically.
He pushed himself up with a surreal speed, only to cause further alarm to the woman. ‘Please,’ he assured her, ‘I am not here to hurt you.’ It was at that point he noticed a large shiny object: a form of transport, he reasoned. Perhaps in this dream he was supposed to get her inside it (and then he would transform back into a human in order to seduce her). But she had started to run away from him. As she got beyond the ship, a man appeared – in a white suit. He stopped the woman, was explaining something to her. She seemed to have calmed somewhat. The man then approached Torbin; he seemed to have an air of confidence. Torbin wondered if he was the enemy he had to destroy, but put the thought aside as the man spoke. ‘Torbin, please listen to what I have to say because it will be the truth. I am here to help you. Your memory has been affected.’ The man then indicated towards his vessel. ‘We need to leave immediately; this is a highly dangerous place.’
The woman had already entered the craft when Torbin stepped through, waiting with bemusement as a seat formed out of what looked like a storage area – to fit his metal bulk. They lifted off with a force that caused the woman to gasp.
After they had left the earth's atmosphere, Torbin questioned the man about how he could have got this strange body; he still held to the notion this was not real, either a dream or a simulation of reality.
The man, seated in front, turned his curiously flawless head sideways. ‘It was given to you for a specific purpose – to defeat an enemy.’ That confirmed his belief.
‘An enemy? Sounds like something from action movie.’ He thought about how to test the logical limits of this dream.
‘They are called the Elusivers, and they are now about to take the advantage, they have the man who was working on our best defence strategy.’
‘Sounds like it's going to be fun.’
‘Fun?’ Zardino queried. ‘This is not about having fun!’
‘Oh please. You don't expect me to accept this is in any way reality?’
‘Torbin, what you are currently experiencing is sense-dissociative disorder. In other words, your artificial body is making you feel removed from being real.’
‘I could have come up with that explanation.’
The woman then turned towards him. ‘It could also be that you are in denial.’
‘Oh, don't tell me; you're a psychiatrist, right?’ He felt irked for a few seconds, but then figured it made sense to have someone to convince him.
‘I can tell you my name is Raiya,’ she told him ‘Beyond that... Like you there is something wrong with my memory.’
Torbin rather liked the idea of her being a psychiatrist – for reasons he was not quite sure.
After about a forty minute journey, in which the man explained to Raiya her current situation, they landed in a moon-crater, which then became a sealed hanger.
The man – who (preposterously) called himself Zardino – said, ‘If you want to continue living then you must follow my instructions.’
‘Sounds like a threat,’ Torbin remarked.
‘It is simply a statement of fact.’
Torbin followed Zardino until they reached an incongruous-looking steel door. ‘
‘Through there is a device so powerful it can kill a man in less than a second. The only way to control it is by direct access.’
‘Sounds like just the job for me.’ By now there were some niggling doubts about the unreality of his experience; after the assurances from Zardino, he was at least entertaining the notion of there being genuine ramifications.
A wheeled drone approached with a container-drum on its platform, stopping just behind them. Zardino unfastened the lid to reveal a obsidian black, smoothly tapered cylinder, festooned with randomly spaced nodules.
Zardino backed away from the device and said to Torbin, ‘I would hand it over to you ... if it didn't weigh over a ton. But this was designed for you.’
‘What is it?’ Torbin asked, lifting it smoothly out of the container as if it were no more than a cylinder of water.
‘We call it a graviton refraction modulator. It will enable a more precise control of the field intensity.’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘That's a shame given that you designed it.’
Torbin looked at the man, almost dropping the device on the other’s foot. ‘Yet I have no memory.’
‘Well, when I said ... at least you had a big role in its principle design. It is something the enemy may have extracted from your mind, and thus be working flat out to develop a counter measure.’
‘Which means we don't have long.’
‘I will guide you through its installation.’
The door to the lab was fitted with a set of hydraulics, but it still need some help from Torbin to push open. It was a large room, much like a hanger, perhaps a hundred metre walk to get to the main field generator. Even near the entrance Torbin felt the repulsion force. As he walked further in, the modulator cradled in one arm that seemed to be locked firm, the whining noise of his leg servos made him think of some deadly robot intent on its programmed mission.
Up to ten metres from the field generator, the pressure felt like a large balloon was inflating from its centre. His shell didn't seem to feel pain, which was just as well since he imagined his straining servos would be telling him the effort was dangerously too much. Every step now was a herculean effort. Connected to a steel utility belt was something akin to a winch. His HUD display indicated he was within range. When it locked on to target it fired, the explosive force so immense it made him fly back, and for a split second he thought he would fall all the way back to the side and lose hold of the device, but the cable had found its target on a bar of the surrounding cage, stalling him so abruptly it seemed as if his steel belt would rip off. Then, slowly, he was winched in until within working distance of the field generator.
Text on his HUD indicated a comm link, but the ‘Tooooorb ...’ of a voice that came through was to slow to perceive as words.
‘I don't understand,’ Torbin enunciated as slowly as he thought he could be understood.
After a few minutes the instruction came as text – a program, and then he knew what to do. He re-routed various pipes and massively insulated cables so that the modulator device became an intermediary between the generator and the power grid, all the while the unnerving sight of sparks flying and coolant vapour escaping.
After half an hour the monitor program confirmed Torbin had been successful; the winch unwound until he reached the exit.
Mission accomplished. Yet his feeling of satisfaction was soon washed away in the emergency red glow of the corridor, and turned fully to panic by a siren.
*
There were no signs of an invasion, beyond the sounding of a klaxon and what Zardino had told Raiya of an unidentifiable security breach. The warning came, it seemed, a few seconds after Torbin passed through the door of the lab, yet Zardino assured her that Torbin's task was of such importance that he would have to continue, no doubt oblivious. Even with the advantage of the time differential Raiya knew he would not have time to escape; from their perspective he'd take almost a minute to complete the task. They had to be out in ten seconds.
They were already at orbital distance from the moon, still within the temporal dilation field, which meant events beyond were happening at a faster rate.
Zardino in the seat next to Raiya said, ‘You know logically we had no choice. These aliens have unlimited resources. Their only goal is to destroy the base.’
‘Then … logically Torbin does not have a chance.’
‘Not necessarily. If he stays near the field generator he may be protected. I can't think of any type of missile that's capable of reaching it.’
‘Don't you have weapons at the base?’
‘For what it's worth, yes. I only hope Torbin does not think he can defend himself with one.’
‘You’re supposed to be his protector. And yet you abandon him.’
‘I'm not sure they intend to kill him, Raiya. If they had wanted to, then he would be dead already. He's had some kind of connection with them – for decades now.’
‘Because he was useful to them?’
‘I don't think it was ever as simple as that.’
‘I think I'm starting to remember him.’
*
Torbin remained still, half way along the corridor. He knew that much beyond this point time ran about two hundred and fifty times slower. At least here he had the advantage of a quick reaction. But what good was that against an enemy he could not see? The control room, which should now be connected with the device, was still within the ‘slow-down’ penumbra.
He ran towards the corridor's end, remembering his one glimpse of the control room after arrival: a side door. The door had a touch pad and an iris recognition. He imagined having to force his way in, but he tried the conventional method. Surprisingly, it accepted his ident and slid open. The lights were off until he entered, illuminating the room in clinical brightness. He had no idea how to operate the controls. In desperation he said to the facing display: ‘Increase field power.’
‘Yes, Torbin,’ came the highly synthetic male voice. ‘Do you wish me to use Zardino's recommended maximum?’ The voice was coming from a small box situated in a recess amid all the display graphics.
‘Yes!’
‘Power now at recommended maximum.’ A screen at the front of the box had an oscillating wave in sync with the voice. It continued: ‘I must warn you that the security of the base has been compromised.’
‘By what?’
‘Cannot identify.’
‘Do you have a feed of it?’ But as he said those words the display on the box disappeared as if a power cable had been pulled. Power failure confirmed a few seconds later when every other light winked out, replaced by an emergency red glow.
Before he even looked, Torbin knew it was there. When he turned to look at the dark and spindly figure he hoped it would be his exiled ally. But there was a difference; not some identifiable difference in physical appearance, more the way in which it seemed to loom over him, despite his own two metre height. It wanted to intimidate.
Torbin said to the creature, ‘You’re too late. It’s done.’ He remembered now: the work he’d been doing, the fail safes they ensured against this very occurrence – that once the process was in train it could not be stopped by simply cutting the power.
‘We know everything, Torbin,’ the creature said in a voice that was not much more than a whisper. ‘Roidon’s mind was like an open book.’
‘But he didn’t know everything. The only one who knows every detail is currently a long way from here.’
‘We always knew you were flawed. Even in your current form, you are powerless against us.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not about me any more.’
The creature stepped forward. ‘Yet you value your importance in this struggle against the inevitable.’
‘Nothing’s inevitable.’
‘Your death is. What you are doing here is merely delaying it.’
‘No, if any