Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

The reply was cold with arrogance. “I shall do as I see fit. Meanwhile, I advise that you lie passive and do not attempt to interfere with me.”

“Cram it, Daryesh!” Laird’s mouth drew back in a snarl. “I won’t be dictated to by anyone, let alone a ghost.”

Persuasively, the answer came, “At the moment, neither of us has much choice. We are hunted, and if they have energy trackers⁠—yes, I see they do⁠—they’ll find us by this body’s thermal radiation alone. Best we surrender peaceably. Once aboard the ship, loaded with all the might of Vwyrdda, our chance should come.”

Laird lay quietly, watching the hunters move closer, and the sense of defeat came down on him like a falling world. What else could he do? What other chance was there?

“All right,” he said at last, audibly. “All right. But I’ll be watching your every thought, understand? I don’t think you can stop me from committing suicide if I must.”

“I think I can. But opposing signals to the body will only neutralize each other, leave it helplessly fighting itself. Relax, Laird, lie back and let me handle this. I am Daryesh the warrior, and I have come through harder battles than this.”

They rose and began walking down the hillside with arms lifted. Daryesh’s thought ran on, “Besides⁠—that’s a nice-looking wench in command. It could be interesting!”

His laughter rang out under the moon, and it was not the laughter of a human being.

“I can’t understand you, John Laird,” said Joana.

“Sometimes,” replied Daryesh lightly, “I don’t understand myself very well⁠—or you, my dear.”

She stiffened a little. “That will do, Lieutenant. Remember your position here.”

“Oh, the devil with our ranks and countries. Let’s be live entities for a change.”

Her glance was quizzical. “That’s an odd way for a Solman to phrase it.”

Mentally, Daryesh swore. Damn this body, anyway! The strength, the fineness of coordination and perception, half the senses he had known, were missing from it. The gross brain structure couldn’t hold the reasoning powers he had once had. His thinking was dull and sluggish. He made blunders the old Daryesh would never have committed. And this young woman was quick to see them, and he was a prisoner of John Laird’s deadly enemies, and the mind of Laird himself was tangled in thought and will and memory, ready to fight him if he gave the least sign of⁠—

The Solarian’s ego chuckled nastily. Easy, Daryesh, easy!

Shut up! his mind snapped back, and he knew drearily that his own trained nervous system would not have been guilty of such a childishly emotional response.

“I may as well tell you the truth, Captain Rostov,” he said aloud. “I am not Laird at all. Not any more.”

She made no response, merely drooped the lids over her eyes and leaned back in her chair. He noticed abstractedly how long her lashes were⁠—or was that Laird’s appreciative mind, unhindered by too much remembrance of Ilorna?

They sat alone, the two of them, in her small cabin aboard the Janyard cruiser. A guard stood outside the door, but it was closed. From time to time they would hear a dull thump or clang as the heavy machines of Vwyrdda were dragged aboard⁠—otherwise they might have been the last two alive on the scarred old planet.

The room was austerely furnished, but there were touches of the feminine here and there⁠—curtains, a small pot of flowers, a formal dress hung in a half-open closet. And the woman who sat across the desk from him was very beautiful, with the loosened ruddy hair streaming to her shoulders and the brilliant eyes never wavering from his. But one slender hand rested on a pistol.

She had told him frankly, “I want to talk privately with you. There is something I don’t understand⁠ ⁠… but I’ll be ready to shoot at the first suspicion of a false move. And even if you should somehow overpower me, I’d be no good as a hostage. We’re Janyards here, and the ship is more than the life of any one of us.”

Now she waited for him to go on talking.

He took a cigarette from the box on her desk⁠—Laird’s habits again⁠—and lit it and took a slow drag of smoke into his lungs. All right, Daryesh, go ahead. I suppose your idea is the best, if anything can be made to work at all. But I’m listening, remember.

“I am all that is left of this planet,” he said tonelessly. “This is the ego of Daryesh of Tollogh, Immortal of Vwyrdda, and in one sense I died a million years ago.”

She remained quiet, but he saw how her hands clenched and he heard the sharp small hiss of breath sucked between the teeth.

Briefly, then, he explained how his mental pattern had been preserved, and how it had entered the brain of John Laird.

“You don’t expect me to believe that story,” she said contemptuously.

“Do you have a lie detector aboard?”

“I have one in this cabin, and I can operate it myself.” She got up and fetched the machine from a cabinet. He watched her, noticing the grace of her movements. You died long ago, Ilorna⁠—you died and the universe will never know another like you. But I go on, and she reminds me somehow of you.

It was a small black thing that hummed and glowed on the desk between them. He put the metal cap on his head, and took the knobs in his hands, and waited while she adjusted the controls. From Laird’s memories, he recalled the principle of the thing, the measurement of activity in separate brain-centers, the precise detection of the slight extra energy needed in the higher cerebral cortex to invent a falsehood.

“I have to calibrate,” she said, “Make up something I know to be a lie.”

“New Egypt has rings,” he smiled, “which are made of Limburger cheese. However, the main body of the planet is a delicious Camembert⁠—”

“That will do. Now repeat your previous statements.”

Relax, Laird, damn it⁠—blank yourself! I can’t control this thing