Chapter 5
“Command: Open your eyes.”
The Command phrase sent the microprocessor into its override mode. Synapses fired, reforging old links through ganglia. The microprocessor tagged and identified the proper muscles, then caused them to contract.
Danal’s eyes fluttered open.
Light bombarded his retinas, and the microprocessor immediately directed the irises to constrict, stepping down the glare. Danal blinked a second time.
Sensations began to fill his mind like wildfire; each cell in his body awoke with a shout of exhilaration. Danal sensed that his body was slick and smooth, hairless. He could feel every nerve ending like spiders on his skin; he could almost feel the light from the harsh overhead panels striking him. He was standing.
A man filled his field of view, and Danal drank in every detail without looking elsewhere. The technician stood slightly shorter than Danal, and his face seemed wildly asymmetrical, with brown hair hanging long on one side of his face, cropped short on the other—one eyebrow shaved, the other enhanced by eyeliner—a single gold nostril stud reflecting the light. Danal stared without moving, and the descriptor words and concepts congealed in his brain, reassigning mental labels to the images his retinas conveyed: “brown,” “eyebrow,” “gold.”
The microprocessor frantically scanned Danal’s temporal lobe, accessing any information that had survived the journey through death and back, scribbling on the newborn tabula rasa. Danal noticed black symbols across the pocket of the tech’s white lab smock, but for a moment they meant nothing to him. Then suddenly, like a light bulb flicking on inside his head, the symbols snapped into focus and became words: Rodney Quick.
“Can ... you ... understand ... me?” Rodney said in careful syllables.
Danal heard the question, digested it, and searched for the appropriate response. Slowly, still uncertain of his specific muscle control, he moved his head down, then up, hesitantly at first, and then nodding deeply and confidently.
“ I want you to answer me with your voice,” Rodney said quickly. “Command: Answer.”
Danal dredged up the word from deep under his subconscious, peeling back the wrapper of information stored there. Other words, phrases, idioms poured forth, filling the empty pockets of his resurrected brain. He exhaled, setting his vocal cords vibrating with specific and careful control. He moved his jaw, his tongue, his lips, shaping the sounds in the immensely complicated task of speaking:
“Yes.”
Nutrient solution still trickled out of the tank from which Danal had emerged, running through grates in the floor to holding vats even farther beneath the ground. Danal stood like a statue. Solution dripped down his slick skin. He noticed that the yellow droplets had a decidedly pinkish tinge, and something buried at the back of his mind told him that the different coloration was a sure sign of mutating bacteria in the final bath....
Rodney quickly hosed the remaining liquid into the grate, washing away any incriminating pink tint, although the anomalous color was already fading as the mutated bacteria died upon exposure to the harsh outside world. For good measure, Rodney turned the high-pressure hose toward the motionless Servant, rinsing the last of the solution from the Servant’s skin as well.
Some of the exterior nerves on Danal’s body shut themselves down as the icy water drenched him. His fragile muscle control, still not completely activated, went haywire. Danal fell backward, collapsing to the floor. Too late, his arm reached out to break his fall, but he twisted awkwardly and struck his head on the side of his emptied vat. Half an instant later, he identified the sensation of pain.
Danal lay crumpled and helpless—but completely awake—on the cold, wet floor as the tech stood over him. Danal stared at a droplet of water barely half an inch in front of his unblinking eye, fascinated by the play of light on its surface.
“Oh, brother!” Rodney snorted. “Command: Stand up.”
The microprocessor reached out again for the right nerve ganglia, activating Danal’s Servant programming. His muscles awakened, and he climbed stiffly to his knees, barely keeping his balance and barely able to stop the landslide of sensory input that poured into his undead eyes. He coughed the nutrient solution out of his lungs, then regained control of himself. An impulse made him want to smile blithely, but somehow the subtle facial muscles remained frozen, leaving Danal filled with awe yet expressionless.
Without turning his head from the tech, he used peripheral vision to focus on the room around him, the vast resurrection chamber with its rows upon rows of different vats and chambers, inspection tables, other Servants going about their tasks. Danal found it fascinating.
Rodney narrowed his eyes and looked furtively over his shoulder, then turned back to the newly resurrected Servant. “Command: Dance!”
Jerkily, without thought, Danal tried to lift one leg, then the other. He somehow managed to hop back and forth, looking ridiculous. He stumbled again, but regained his balance. His muscle control spread rapidly, and with the speed of the microprocessor Danal seemed to have a longer time to compensate and shift his balance. The Servant achieved a subtle mastery of his body, like a precocious child rapidly putting together all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Watching the performance, Rodney gave a little superior-sounding laugh.
“What are you doing now, Mister Quick?”
Danal watched as Supervisor came up silently from behind. She moved as if partially in a trance, floating between the vats, but with a presence about her that made her seem to emanate from the walls, the floor, the lights, everywhere the Net could see.
Rodney jumped, and Danal saw the color drain from his face. But the tech composed his face into a serious expression without missing a beat and turned to face Supervisor. “I’m testing his muscle reflexes, Madam. He seems to be coordinating well.”
“Bullshit.” Her voice carried no excitement, no anger, just a flat statement that exposed the technician as a liar, allowing no room for question. “Mister Nathans said to give Danal special treatment. If you fail, I am going to destroy you.”
The tech spoke defensively. “This Servant is my very best work, Madam! Look where I installed the synHeart unit: only half the scar you’d expect. You saw the wound where the neo-Satanists hacked out his heart!”
“Just do your job, and do it adequately, Mister Quick.” Supervisor smiled at him. “Try to survive as long as you can.”
Rodney made no comment. Danal watched as faint beads of sweat popped out of the tech’s visible pores.
At the mention of the scar, Danal stared at his body, looking at the white line down the center of his chest where the—knife—had cut. His past seemed to be swathed in thick layers of cheesecloth, hidden from his view. Although he wondered, any answers rising in his memory melted like snowflakes in a fire. He wanted to reach out and finger the scar, but his muscles could not find the volition to do so.
Supervisor stood in silence for a long moment, apparently to let Rodney sweat for as long as possible. “Well, Mister Quick? Is he ready?”
“Yes, most certainly. As always, promptly on the deadline. A routine resurrection, Madam.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Supervisor held out her right hand, running her fingers along the primary Net keyboard tattooed on the palm. Ten keys, each with five functions coded to the five specific fingerprints on Supervisor’s left hand, made it possible for her to type fifty different characters. She input the proper sequence that linked her to the Net. After she had reoriented herself to her new position as a small blip in the vast computer database, Supervisor activated the Net-compatible scanners implanted in her eye. Danal endured her inspection as she looked at him through machine eyes.
“Glycerin levels all wrong. And I see a glitch in his brain-wave pattern. Dammit! The bacteria mutated—you weren’t watching him, Mister Quick.” She seemed unaccustomed to using an angry tone of voice, and the words came out awkward, but still threatening.
“Yes! Yes, I was, Madam! The nutrient bath was as clear as can be—yellow like chicken soup!” One, and only one, drop of sweat ran down the side of Rodney’s forehead.
“I somehow doubt you saw nothing unusual. Even you aren’t quite that stupid. You’ve been licking the glass on the female tanks again, haven’t you?”
“No, Madam!” He sounded indignant. “You know how attentive I’ve been, especially with this Servant.”
Supervisor abruptly ignored Rodney and turned to the placid-looking Servant who stood damp and naked under the harsh lights. “Danal, what do you remember from your past life?”
Danal wrinkled his forehead a little, but stood silent.
“He’s brain-damaged! Aww, shit!” Rodney gasped to himself. Nonchalantly, but with amazing speed, Supervisor boxed him in the ear to silence him.
“Nothing,” Danal finally answered. “I ... remember nothing.”
Supervisor paused, looking somewhat surprised. Rodney breathed a loud sigh of relief and put his hands on his hips, trying to regain some semblance of control. “Why did you take so long to answer?”
“I was thinking.” The words flowed easily through his vocal cords now. After an oblivion of rest, he wanted to stretch his voice, to shout, to sing. But his body didn’t move. He stood and waited, like a mannequin.
Supervisor and the tech looked at him strangely for a moment.
“Servant, Command: Input Mode.” Supervisor’s fingers raced across the tattooed keyboard on her palm.
Danal’s body responded of its own volition, controlled by the microprocessor. His arms and legs snapped to attention, and he opened his mind to receive.
In less than a second the Net scanned Danal’s new identity and confirmed his name and the name of his Master, Vincent Van Ryman. After a short pause, short even for the microprocessor’s view of time, terabytes of information filed onto his memory, and his parched mind rapidly absorbed the data.
The Net gave him nuggets of his Master Van Ryman’s history and habits—presumably so Danal could be a better Servant to him. All at once, and without time to sort through the facts and arrange them in any order, Danal learned that Vincent Van Ryman lived a comfortable life from the profits of when his father Stromgaard had sold his share of Resurrection, Inc. to Francois Nathans. Protected by elaborate Intruder Defense Systems, Van Ryman lived alone in an eccentrically antique home.
Not alone.
What about Julia?
Julia? Danal wondered. The thought had come to him from the far reaches of his mind, whispering at the corners of his ears like memories shouting at him through miles of dense fog. The thought came with no explanation, no further details—who was Julia? Other memories, a seething pot of déjà vu boiled far beneath the surface of his brain, out of the microprocessor’s reach.
Another pause in the microprocessor’s slowed-down time. Danal felt the Net picking around in his mind, double-checking, making sure of his identity. Danal kept his thoughts vividly aware, though he didn’t know what to expect, or how he would know if something went wrong. His core programming penetrated deeper than instinct, molding his life, making him know that he was not to ask questions, not to think, not to feel.
He suspected that he already knew as much as a Servant should know about his Master, but the Net divulged yet another file, this one coded for a much higher-level password, with additional details and archival images.
Vincent Van Ryman was the leader of the neo-Satanists,
not anymore!
a secret society that had adapted ancient Satanism to the context of modern technology. Van Ryman had, however, denounced his connections with the group, and had become one of its strongest opponents—but recently he had returned to the fold again, with a zeal and vehemence that overshadowed even his initial fervor.
impossible!
Danal’s head swam with a whirlpool of conflicting thoughts, ghosts of memory fleeing like shadows whenever he tried to focus on them.
He was a Servant. His mind was a clean slate, polished smooth by passage through death and back. He had kept nothing of his past.
Or, more likely, he was simply not able to access the memories ... but he knew they existed, closeted away somewhere. These spurious glitches of thought jumping helter-skelter onto his forebrain—were they real, or did they flash back to a life that never existed? Who knew what dreams and fantasies a brain could summon and create during the deepest sleep of all?
By the time Danal had assimilated all this, Supervisor’s finger still hadn’t had enough time to lift itself from the keypad on her palm. “Completed,” she said to no one in particular. “Servant: What is your name?”
“My name is Danal.”
“Who is your Master?”
“Vincent Van Ryman.”
“See, I told you he wasn’t brain-damaged,” Rodney interrupted. “I watched him like he was my own baby.”
Supervisor ignored him completely. “What is the square root of 49?”
“Seven.”
“Spell the word ‘rhinoceros.’”
“R-H-I-N-O-C-E-R-O-S.”
Supervisor tested him with the standard questions, assessing the baggage of knowledge he had managed to carry over from his first life.
“He tests out quite high,” she commented after she had finished. Rodney grinned broadly, as if barely able to keep himself from giggling now that the terror and uncertainty had passed.
Danal said nothing. He waited, wishing he had some tool to dig deeper into his memories and bring them into the light—or cauterize them and seal the images below his consciousness forever.
* * *