Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [9]
“Any thoughts?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” asked Déjà. When Dr. Halsey didn’t respond, she continued. “You didn’t tell him everything,” the AI said.
“No,” said Dr. Halsey. “I didn’t.”
“I would be remiss not to point out that, as the individual responsible for the intellectual development of the Spartans, you’ve given him faulty information about how a control generally works in a scientific experiment. The control group generally is the group that does not experience the conditions of—”
“I know that, Déjà,” said Halsey, cutting her off.
Déjà nodded curtly. “I would also be remiss not to point out that Soren-66 himself is precociously intelligent and has almost certainly realized that the reasons you gave for allowing him a choice were false.”
“And what were my real reasons?” asked Dr. Halsey.
“I don’t know,” said Déjà. “I have a feeling, however, that I’m as confused about that as you are.”
Dr. Halsey nodded.
“But if I had to guess,” said Déjà, “knowing you as well as I do, I would say that it was a way of easing your own conscience. You just wanted to tell him. You wanted to tell one of them. You wanted to see if just one of them would make the choice for himself.”
Dr. Halsey sighed. “Yes,” she said. “You may be right. Thank you for being honest with me, Déjà.”
“No need to thank me. I can’t help it,” said Déjà. “It’s in my programming.”
Dr. Halsey brushed her hand through the hologram and it disappeared. She leaned back in her chair. I’ve given him a burden to live with, she thought. I’ve let him make his own decision, but Déjà’s right. I’ve shifted the burden of responsibility back to him if anything goes wrong. A child. Carrying my sins.
Let’s hope nothing goes wrong.
FOUR
___________
He was dreaming but even in the dream it was as if he couldn’t wake up, as if he had been asleep for days and days. In the dream he was back in the forest again, but in addition to the cold and the hunger there was also something stalking him, a strange creature, almost human but not quite: deformed somehow, its mouth cast in an odd leer, its body lumpy and irregular, dragging one of its feet behind. It was always just a little way behind him, never quite catching up with him, but he couldn’t seem to shake it, either. He could hear it there crashing through the woods behind him. Every so often it would give a cry of pain that was so piercing that it was all he could do to keep going. How long had he been walking? He ate what he could grab from the ground around him and kept going, dead on his feet, half-asleep, until suddenly he took a wrong turn and found the path before him blocked. And there the creature was, just behind him and on him before he could escape. It plucked him up off the ground like a toy and hurled him. He smashed through limbs and branches and came down hard, the forest around him fading to white as he died.
Only he wasn’t dead. What he saw, all around him, was a blank, uneasy whiteness, filled with a slow buzzing. And then the whiteness slowly resolved into a piercing light. To either side of him, dim shapes began to take form, resolving into heads, the heads themselves covered with white cloth caps, the faces hidden behind breathing masks. Beneath these heads, he saw, the clothing that covered the bodies was spattered and stained with blood. It took him a moment to realize the blood was his own.
One of the heads was speaking, he realized, a low rumbling coming out of it, though he couldn’t understand what it was saying. It stopped and one of the other heads started to make a similar sound. What’s wrong with them, he wondered. And then, What’s wrong with me?
Then a set of fingers waved itself over his eyes. He tried to follow them but could do so only at a slight remove, his eyes moving always just a little late. A head dove down closer to his eyes, suddenly becoming crisply, painfully defined.
“Is he supposed to be like this?” the head asked, its voice muffled through the mask.