LITMIR.BIZ

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Nathans? Or might that be worse than not saying anything, if Nathans ended up being part of it? After all, Nathans had carefully led him away from the tank, distracted him, so Van Ryman could have time alone.

      Or maybe Nathans had been deviously sincere about looking for new management recruits, and this was some sort of test to see how dedicated Rodney was to the successful completion of his job. If so, if he suspected sabotage from anyone—even a person as powerful as Vincent Van Ryman himself—then he should report it to Nathans. But he should also be willing to trust his ultimate boss, Francois Nathans, in all things. And if Nathans was obviously involved with this staged tampering perhaps Rodney was supposed to see the attempt, but to trust Nathans to intervene if anything absolutely needed to be stopped. Should he say anything or not?

      Rodney’s head was still spinning when Nathans patted him on the back, and Van Ryman shook his hand, thanking him for the preview of his new Servant. The technician convinced himself to make a parting comment. “Thank you both for coming. I very much enjoyed meeting both of you. I hope I haven’t disappointed you.”

      “Of course you haven’t, Rodney. I’m sure we’ll be talking again.” Nathans nodded and then motioned for Van Ryman to enter the lift compartment first. The doors whisked shut and swallowed up the two men.

      The instant the lift doors had closed, Rodney rushed back to the vat that held the Servant named Danal. Carefully he inspected the vent openings, but could not tell if they had been moved. He sniffed the air, trying to detect any unusual smell, but found none. A smudge on the transparent wall showed where Van Ryman had touched the glass, but that proved nothing. He squinted into the yellow amniotic fluid, trying to detect any changes. Was it murkier now than before? Did he see any difference?

      Supervisor wouldn’t hesitate for a moment if Rodney did anything to jeopardize the successful resurrection of this particular Servant. The scrubber bacteria in the final bath, the solution in which Danal now hung suspended, were genetically volatile, easily mutated, and more than once a mutated solution had adversely affected the physical or mental condition of a reanimated Servant. Sometimes the motor control seemed skewed; sometimes the mental faculties were dulled or sharpened—and an unusually intelligent Servant caused more concern than a totally stupid one. What if the original memories of the individual somehow came too close to the surface? But without the final solution to do one more scouring and to replace the electrolytes in the brain, the microprocessor would not function properly.

      Rodney could think of no way to verify any tampering, short of taking a sample of the amniotic solution to the analytical lab. But then he’d have to explain his suspicions, and that might cause him as much trouble as he was trying to avoid.

      The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that Nathans had devised a test for him. Or perhaps it was Supervisor’s doing after all. But even the major fact of knowing this was a test didn’t help him at all. Nor did he know what the penalty for failure would be.

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 scream 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.

      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 asymmetric 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,” “gold,” “eyebrow.”

      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 and 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 and forming the sounds in the immensely complicated task of speaking:

      “Yes.”

      The 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 and blasted the motionless Servant, rinsing the last of the solution from the Servant’s skin.

      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 pouring 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

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