Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail Read Free Page B

hardly likely that their evolution, even given some of the same basics as humankind, is anything like that of humans.”
    He nodded. “I keep thinking of Morah’s inhuman eyes. He claims he is not a robot and that he is the same Yatek Morah sentenced to the Diamond more than forty years ago. We need not believe him, and should not, but let’s for a moment take his statements at face value. If he is who and what he claims to be—then why those eyes?”
    “A Warden modification, possibly self-induced for effect. He could do it easily on Charon.”
    “Perhaps. But, perhaps, too, those eyes mean something more. What does he see with them? And how? A broader spectrum, perhaps? I don’t think they are totally for effect. For protection, maybe? I wonder …”
    “Still, the bottom line remains your report,” the computer noted. “I will admit that I, too, am somewhat curious, even though I have the basics.”
    “Medusa first. Let’s complete the set. Maybe my missing piece will be found there. Or, maybe, what I experience will jog my mind to see those missing implications. It can’t hurt.”
    “But Talant Ypsir lives. The mission is incomplete there.”
    “We are beyond caring about the Lords of the Diamond now, I think, except, perhaps, in some sort of solution if one is possible. I need information. Medusa will have the most direct contacts with the aliens. Let me get the information I need.”
    “But whether or not it is there, you will still make your report after that?”
    He nodded. “Ill make my report.” He got up and walked forward to the central console, then sat down in the large padded chair and adjusted it for maximum comfort. “Are you ready?”
    “Yes.” The computer lowered the probes, which the agent carefully attached to his forehead. Now he simply lay back and relaxed, hardly feeling the computer-induced injection that cleared his mind and established the proper state for receipt and filtration of this kind of information.
    Thanks to an organic module inside the brain of his other self down there on Medusa, every single thing that had happened to that other self was transmitted to the computer as raw data. Now it would be fed into the mind of the original in the chair, filtered—the basics and unimportant matter discarded by his own mind—and that other self would give a basic report both to the agent in the chair and to the computer as if the man were there in that room—which, in a very broad and very odd sense, he was.
    The drugs and small neural probes did their job. His own mind and personality receded, replaced by a similar, yet oddly different pattern.
    “The agent is commanded to report,” the computer ordered, sending the command deep into the agent’s mind, a mind no longer quite his own.
    Recorders clicked on.
    Slowly, the man in the chair cleared his throat. He mumbled, groaned, and made odd, disjointed words and sounds, as his mind received, coded, and classified the incoming data, adjusted it all, and sorted it out.
    Finally, the man began to speak.

CHAPTER ONE
     
    Rebirth

     
    After Krega’s talk and a little preparation to put my own affairs in order—this would be a long one—I checked into the Confederacy Security Clinic. I’d been here many times before, of course—but not knowingly for this purpose. Mostly, this was where they programmed you with whatever information you’d need for a mission and where, too, you were “reintegrated.” Naturally, the kind of work I did was often extralegal, a term I prefer to illegal, which implies criminal intent—and much of it was simply too hot to ever be known. To avoid such risks, all agents, of course, had their own experience of sensitive missions wiped from their minds when they were over.
    It may seem like a strange life, going about not knowing where you have been or what you’ve done, but it has its compensations. Because any potential enemy, military or political, knows you’ve been wiped, you can live a