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himself along a wire stretched for this purpose along the floor until he was
on the main level, then went hand over hand, dragging his long tail, toward
the familiar figure in the chair.
"In here," Mellik invited him. "You'll be more comfort-able in the conference
room, I think."
In fact, it was very nice at that, he saw, consisting of both dry areas and
shallow rectangular pools made for the Ka-lindan form. He'd expected to see
one or both of the strange dual personalities there as well, but
Mellik had somehow managed to keep things private.
He settled in, setting his dorsal fin in the notch, and felt reasonably
comfortable for an air-breathing environment. She slid from the chair and down
into the next compartment.
"Sorry to get you here on short notice, and for this area, but it's the only
one not constantly filled with our people," she told him. "I see you're a week
further along in your change, and I assume you noticed that everyone here is
either ancient or female?"
"I noticed. In fact, I would have assumed that whatever agent was used was
probably tested on the embassy here first. It would be relatively easy to do.
A lot easier than pol-luting a whole hex. I'd love to know how that was done!"
"We're working on it. Trouble is, if they were willing to come out and reveal
themselves like this, they already probably took that into consideration. When
we find them, we'll find part of the answer at least."
"That's easy. Just wait. The one guy that's left among roughly four million
women will be the one. And when he demands to be king, he'll get acclaimed,
too."
"My! You are dismal today!"
"Well, it's playing hell with my own family and relation-ships. But that isn't
why you brought me here."
"No," she admitted. "It's not. It's those two strange dualities."
"Yes? Driving you nuts, too?"
She thought a moment, trying to figure out a good way to say it. "I I have
reason to believe that one of them is an act."
"I won't ask you the details, but which should be simple. The originals can't
be any more along than me."
"Well, that would be logical, I admit. But consider this: you remember the
neurology report on them from back in Mahakor?"
"Sure. One's in each half of the brain, and they can trade off some things so
that her speech has improved and he can figure out a symbol. So?"
"Brain halves work in opposition. You know that. Right brain, left side, left
brain, right side. Right?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Well, the female personality, Ming, was in the right and controlled the left
side. You could see it. That's one reason why she had initial problems with
verbal skills. The male, Ari, was in the left and had problems with
abstractions and coordination. Again, you could see it."
"You mean that's not the case anymore?" Shissik said.
"It's opposite. The alleged blank one, female, is precisely the way the
originals were. The older body, the still more male one, has it reversed.
She's now on the right, he's now on the left. And, although he tried to
conceal the fact and only slipped up when I reran monitor footage over and
over to make sure, the male one can read Kalindan. Maybe not the great works
or a manual on nuclear fusion, but well enough to read most anything around
here. The female has a rudimentary knowledge, more like a first year grammar
school child."
"So? They're not stupid. And some of that could have been exchanged in the
transfer of data."
"They aren't that bright, not to be able to switch brain sides. I don't even
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understand how they do it now, but I know the theory. Shissik, there's no
biological way they could have transferred the data from one side to the other
and vice versa without going through a second party. I think our 'Other' here,
who was right-handed, pulled Ming's data into the right brain and then Ari's
into the left because of that, then read them back, possibly adding some
modules like the basic reading, since we know she was studying it. That
implies a conscious action by somebody or some thing that knew enough to be
able to do that."
"But not smart enough to conceal its expert reading abili-ties or know its
right from its left? That's hard to accept."
"No, the right-left thing is now impossible to fix. There's no empty brain
capacity to use as a holding area anymore. And they concealed a lot very well.
You still don't believe me when I say I think the original is the phony, or
that there is a phony, do you? So what's a little slip that perhaps no-body
noticed? Reading an all-text screen of proposals for the conference is not
only natural, it's impossible not to do if you know how."
"All right," he sighed. "I'll grant the point for the sake of argument. These
are bad times. Now, let me ask you a few questions. Who? And why?"
"I don't know. Those two computerlike people who came in, suppressing the
original personalities, aren't really ac-counted for. The Ming memories and
personality are in with the Ari memories and personality.
The other one, which we are informed is an educated priest or something like
that, is probably this amnesiac
Amboran, but she seems to have only the personality, not the memories. Where
are those memories? Why didn't things work the usual way? I think there was
something else, something that came along with them when they were transported
here, came in the heads of those two young women. That something is what
caused all the problems, and it wound up in the body of the one we called the
Other. I think it's trying to mask itself while it accumulates the memories,
the data, from anyone else who came in. After that I don't know. I don't think
it's on the Chalidang side. I don't think it's on our side, either, or any
side but its own. But it definitely has both power and an agenda, and
patience. The only question in my mind is, now that I know, what do we do
about it?"
He shrugged. "If you can convince our superiors of this, then it definitely is
not something with our interest at heart. That means you confine it, confront
it, and, if you don't get the right answers, you kill it."
"There's too much other stuff going on right now for that and you know it,"
she told him. "That's why I
asked for you. I want you to talk to them and see if you see what I see. If
you do, and you feel safe, you can force the issue. Otherwise they are going
to introduce everyone from that second entry group into one room at one time,
right here, within another day. If they all are together with whatever this
is, it may be too late."
He nodded. "All right. Why not bring your suspicious one up here and let me
talk to him. In private, one on one. This may be absolutely nothing, or it
just might be the key to all this stuff."
She had anticipated him, although she did not take kindly to being excluded
herself. Still, she'd called him in because this was his case and she needed
an ally; by her actions, she'd determined that the resolution would be in his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]