37: Boulder's Game

At the time of Venix' asylum on Mars, the populace had abolished elections - like all other planets. The Citizens' Council had no power to grant laws and collected no taxes. All decisions of major importance were made through instant mass voting.

But above Martian law was the unspoken colonial law of all planets except Earth: Pay whatever tribute the motherworld asks for: resources, energy, genetic harvest, migrant labor... and remember who holds the biggest gun.

Mars, with its vast resources and large colonial population, produced half the metals that built the Terran war machine. Jupiter provided the fuel that propelled the machine. Venus exported know-how and technology to the rest of the planets, ensuring the system's overall efficiency.

Very few people on any planet thought of it - but the colonies owed a substantial amount of their wealth to the same Terran Fleet that could destroy them...

***

Arjja, Venix and Juan took a tunnel car to another house, where the other ten Martian council members plus a dozen scientists were waiting.

The council was a rather informal association. What little human administration that once existed in the previous century had withered away, and the council had no real executive powers, no budget - and Martians paid no local taxes, only the forced Inner Planets Security Tax which financed the MSF.

The council members looked ordinary by colonial standards; they greeted her in the most casual way. With her heat-vision, Venix could see suspicion and fear flare up in their minds.

While she was sitting, the scientists moved scanners over her body.

At least one-third of the members seemed more interested in debating the tax issue. The youngest councilman, a tanned, bulky fellow with ruddy skin fur, called for an immediate planet-wide boycott of all forced taxes.

Older colleagues called his idea foolish, since Earth could easily impose a much more serious trade blockade on Mars. She scanned their heat-emissions to see how much thought lay behind all the words...

One middle-aged, feeble-faced member had an annoying speech impediment, and kept warbling every three-syllable word. The thermal patterns of his brain showed only modest activity.

Another middle-aged man, whose brain seemed hyperactive to the point of breakdown, kept repeating the phrase "the will of the people" whenever he made demands for himself and his clan. He only paused to gulp down another bottle of MocaCoca, a highly addictive alkaloid soft-drink that was outlawed on Venus and the Outer Planets.

In a minute, the bickering group had forgotten about the new guest, who sat still in a corner. She was getting fed up real fast.

Juan ambled in the periphery of the conference-room, and yawned repeatedly.

Venix looked carefully to the oldest, quiet council member: a white-clad man whose spinal column had grown bent. His nose was much thinner than on the other council members, and his sagging skin had no fur at all.

The tag on his shirt read "DAVE ROMAN," and on his sleeve was an antique, yellowed NASA badge. She moved her chair closer to the man, sensing something in the heat-patterns from his balding head.

Dave Roman looked at her as if through a mist. The hand that held his walking-stick began to shake. He squinted and peered at her chest, then at her face.

She raised an amused eyebrow and all but said with her eyes: See anything you like?

"Oh," he chuckled, "Pardon my staring, ma'am... your white suit, and you look like a girl from Earth, just brought back so many memories." His gruff voice was surprisingly loud for such a thin man. "You don't happen to know about that robot we were supposed to meet?"

"I'm Venusian. And a cyborg, not a robot. That's me." She offered to shake hands. Dave Roman seemed to flinch. "I'm Venix, a friend of Argus-A."

"Huh?" grunted the old man, peering at her in utter confusion. Arjja patted Dave on the shoulder and talked soothingly. He leaned back into his seat and dozed off with his mouth open.

"Dave is almost 160 years old," Arjja whispered to Venix. "He did much good for our people... long ago. Most of his brain-tissue was regenerated after a stroke, so he's out of it most of the time. Just let him listen to us, his hearing is pretty good after he got the new eardrum."

"He's a Terran."

Arjja's face and voice hardened: "In the previous century, Dave was a citizen of a federation called 'The United States of North America'. The founders of his federation came from Europe, but they rebelled against their countries of origin all the same. Are you incapable of independent thought, just because you were born on Venus... or do you slavishly follow Boulder Pi's every directive? Are you as arrogant as you seem?"

Venix strained to show a concerned face and posture, so her answer wouldn't come off as stiff and insincere. Time and time again, she was misinterpreted as aloof and over-controlled - because she never coughed, breathed, grunted, yawned, farted, or made spontaneous movements.

"I'm sorry. I used to think I was always right, only because I react so fast. Please forgive me."

Arjja grunted.

***

Venix spent the next half-hour telling the council her story. About her meeting with Argus, how they had exchanged thoughts during the fusion of their nervous systems... but she avoided any intimate details of their love life.

She wasn't sure flesh-and-blood people could understand how well she and Argus knew each other from that one night in Copenhagen.

She skipped the erotic parts and went on to depict how the Kansler could "shut down" and possibly command the movements of Argus.

And she finished with an account of her escape to Mars.

When Venix went quiet, Dave Roman stirred from his apparent slumber, coughed, and pointed his stick at her. She turned to him again. He squinted, took a breath, and smiled. The old geezer had heard every word she said!

"Mighty fine lady, you are, I envy the husband... I was about to say, surely the Kansler must sleep sometimes? Unless his Number Two man Islington takes over the remote-control then. Argus can make a break for it while the Kansler sleeps, he's darn quick, eh?"

The others, except Venix, looked at each other and her in embarrassment.

Arjja mumbled aside to Venix: "We love him, he's one of our founding fathers, but... he's far gone."

She nodded agreement. Dave Roman had to be senile to forget that the Kansler, like most people in the late 22nd century, had Personal Assistants watching and aiding him - of course also while he slept.

And given the Kansler's mania for control and the Fleet's access to cutting-edge technology, his PAs would be extremely alert and intelligent. He might even have one of those synaptic by-pass monitors she'd heard of, which enabled a man to watch surveillance footage in his sleep.

Dave Roman passed a fart. Venix turned up her nose, while everyone else casually shouted the traditional Finnish blessing: "Tervedexi!"

She understood now the slogans she had seen on every Martian outhouse and bathroom-door: GAS IS GREEN, DIRT IS WORTH. Their obsession with terraforming dominated every aspect of their lives.

One of the scientists called for their attention: "Excuse me, we're finished with the scan. The subject, uh, the visitor is not transmitting anything except body heat. She's clean."

Arjja licked her lips nervously, and studied the other council members. They nodded approval. She pressed a button on the panel that was taped to wide palm, and the screens on the conference table lit up with a flat image of Boulder Pi's game-board.

"Watch this closely, Venix - the last and only coded message I received from Boulder Pi before he was taken to the Fleet's lunar research complex. We blew up the image and searched for hidden messages. But his actual message is in plain sight, he must have scribbled it by hand at the last possible minute before sending the image. His handwriting is awful."

"I can read it," said Venix. "It says in the corner: 'The white lady will remember what I told the candidate just before he woke up a new man. Search for the words where everyone can see them.'"

The assembled Martians were startled, when she uttered her conclusion after just one second. "Don't you get it? Now I remember, Gus lay in the stasis-bed waiting to be operated on before he was changed, and Boulder told him -"

She quickly tapped the speech-command button on the screen at her seat.

"Universal file search. Find this phrase: 'The mind controls the body on all levels, even the smallest level.'"

"Searching... please wait..." said the screen's artificial voice. No one in the room spoke a word as they waited. Never before had the minutes felt so slow to Venix.

After five minutes, the MocaCoca-drinking councilman said it was hopeless, and motioned to fetch more bottles in an adjacent room. The others forcefully restrained the man, and Arjja gave him a suspicious glance. Another forty minutes passed in agonizing silence...

The search program produced an old-fashioned Internet page with a single link on it. Venix "clicked" the link with her fingertips on the touch-sensitive screen.

The link opened to another page - with a text message:

THE MIND CONTROLS THE BODY ON ALL LEVELS, EVEN THE SMALLEST LEVEL HXeXlXlXo, mXy cXhXiXlXd. IXf yXoXu cXaXn rXeXaXd tXhXiXs, iXt mXeXaXnXs yXoXu fXiXgXuXrXeXd oXuXt mXy lXiXtXtXlXe mXeXmXoXrXy-sXwXaXpXpXiXnXg tXrXiXcXk...

Boulder's message came with a very crude encryption to elude search-programs. Venix easily sorted out the code and read the unscrambled text out loud...

***

THE MIND CONTROLS THE BODY ON ALL LEVELS, EVEN THE SMALLEST LEVEL

Hello, my child. If you can read this, it means you figured out my little memory-swapping trick. I know which one of you two understood it first - the smart one...

Hopefully, this message contains no names or key words that would enable you-know-who to find it. You and your male counterpart, you will make a great couple. I think of you as my only children. If this sounds deranged, I apologize.

From when I first learned cybernetics, I always knew you would come into existence one day, when circumstances were right. For that is the blessing and the curse of the human species - whatever our minds can dream up, we try to make real.

Memorize this: the manner in which the Head Honcho controls his Main Man. A particle so light, it passes through the sun like through air, but is stopped by water.

Head Honcho has a big, big transmitter of these particles following him at all times, from a far distance, and he controls it through some remote machine very close to his person - or INSIDE his person, I don't know for sure.

Since these control transmissions can reach our Main Man through almost any barrier in space, it would be too difficult for Main Man to shield himself against the signals.

Theoretically, the two of you could live safe and shielded in an ocean, but you'd run into other problems after a while.

In the final stages of creating Main Man, on Head Honcho's orders, my science people inserted a tiny, remote-controlled shutdown thing into Main Man's body.

If Head Honcho dies, for any reason, the transmitter will send a command to the shutdown thing, and it kills Main Man instantly.

Before you try to challenge Head Honcho, the shutdown-thing MUST be removed or neutralized. It could have settled almost anywhere inside Main Man.

That's all I could find out. Good luck. I give you - the world. Be gentle with it, and take care of each other.

You Know Who

P.S.: Hey, smart girl! I almost forgot - you have no control receptor inside you, you were developed by me alone. So you are already free.

But you are physically similar to our Main Man in many other ways, so you should be ideal for trying to reach his mind through direct transmission.

Think of those particles. Use them to reach him. He will need your help... he's not so clever, you know.

Don't forget to type in your real name in the guestbook at the bottom of the page...

***

Venix typed in the word VENICE, sent it across, and the screen turned into graphic noise. The file had erased itself.

"Was that it?" asked Arjja uncertainly. She instinctively held up her arms in protection when Venix pivoted around and hugged her.

From his seat, Dave Roman let out a loud fart.

"Tervedexi!" Venix shouted at him, grinning happily.

One of the scientists said, "Maybe we can help. The Olympus Mons Observatory does a bit of neutrino research on the side. It's pretty obvious Boulder is talking about neutrinos, and he could have heard about our research on his visit."

Arjja pried herself loose from Venix' crushing embrace.

"Can you build a transmitter for me?" Venix asked.

"I'd rather not discuss it here," the scientist replied. "But I think we'll need you to work out the exact details with us, at the observatory."

"I'll try my best," Venix told him. "Pity, that Boulder couldn't find out more. And the engineers who could tell us how to use it, are of course locked up on the Moon and under close surveillance."

The scientist grew visibly excited as he spoke: "Sometimes there are public programs showing the inside of the lunar research complex, I've recorded them all. The Fleet uses those science-shows to scare the colonies with promises of new, terrible weapons. Our computers can analyze these images and perhaps I'll find a clue - but most of the footage is censored, you know."

He urged his colleagues along, and they quickly exited to their transport.

The man with the MocaCoca addiction asked: "If they succeed in contacting Argus-A, won't the Fleet intercept the signals to Argus, and strike at us?" Arjja nodded, her face grim. "Oh, what the Earth," he added rapidly, "we're already at war as it is. Great! I'll get more Moca."

In 0.011 seconds, Venix grew alert: he was the same councilman who had wanted to go outside while they waited for... she switched to infrared vision and grabbed his wrist.

"Are you a Terran informer?" she asked him sharply, watching the thermal patterns of his head.

The man twitched to get free, and spontaneously blurted: "No!" She saw how the blood flow changed in his brain - the patterns screamed YES!

His other hand moved to his pants pocket, and Venix saw it coming: she grabbed and broke both his wrists before he knew it. The man protested and screamed, but in a split-second she had caught what he was reaching for: a small flash-grenade, which would have blinded everyone in the room and covered his escape.

Trapping the councilman in a headlock, she tossed the grenade to Arjja, who caught it awkwardly.

"Oh my Goddess... this is Terran ordnance!" Arjja glowered at the cringing, sobbing traitor. "How could you, Francer? We trusted you! You saw our defense plans!"

"Surrender is our only chance!" councilman Francer whined at them. "Once they're finished massacring the Jovian colonies, it'll be our turn. One cyborg alone almost beat the entire MSF! Can you imagine what an army of creatures like her could do to us? Because that's what we'll be up against! She's the prototype, the new enemy!"

A ghastly silence fell over the room and the other members' eyes turned to Venix; she could read fear and suspicion building in their minds.

"Fine," she snapped, and dropped the wailing Francer to the floor. "I'm leaving. "You are obviously of no help to me or Mars."

She rushed out to Arjja's tunnel car with such swiftness, they could not stop her. In four seconds, she was racing off.

Juan Texeira-Berg made a half-hearted attempt to catch up, groaned, and turned around to give his mother and the council a sound scolding: "Idiotti! We don't need this so-called council. We need what we always needed: people like her."

Arjja gaped at him for a few seconds, but her mood shifted quickly and she separated herself from the crowd to join him.

"Gentlemen," she declared over her shoulder, "we have rendered ourselves obsolete. I hereby resign from all future council duties."

She hurried to the same exit passage that the scientists had used, and punched in on her palmpanel a request for a roton-rocket taxi.

Dave Roman sprung to his feet, and whacked feebly at the cringing Francer with his stick. The council stood around Dave and France, hesitating: should they cheer, or stop the beating of a fellow member?



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