Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [18]
He discovered it felt like talking to a complex animation overlaid upon the real world—the false within the true. He didn’t hide these thoughts, for they remained between him and the healer wizard. For these sessions in the garden, he was left alone even by his welcome personette, who otherwise kept fast to him.
But they were interrupted once.
A stand of bamboo parted in a wave, washing around some-one slithering through, and a woman stepped into the clearing. Nathi was struck by more than the familiar bright red of her hair. Something in her face was shining through the wrinkles and the hardened eyes—something he had found in the girl when she had been dream-dancing in the air, the ignited heart of a magsail brigantine.
He also noticed the signs of many alterations to her motor system. The degrees of freedom in her movement were amazing. Next to her, an ordinary human would have looked like a gorilla next to a nimble dancer—in agility, but not in strength. This woman could cut steel with her bare hands.
The Dragon Guard.
How could he miss this in the girl? Another side of his “hemineglect of truth,” induced by Wish.
The healer wizard bowed. “Your Highness.”
Nathi stared. Non-wizard nobility was rare.
This must be their High Captain.
“You may rise.”
Belatedly, Nathi remembered to bow too.
The woman glided over to Nathi’s avatar. But in e-World, her eyes locked with his. They seemed to say, So. It was you who shared my daughter’s mind.
The healer made to leave.
“Please stay.” The noblewoman gestured. “He is your patient.”
You have been into his mind, she must have left unspoken.
“I am Naomi,” said the Dragon woman. And, immediately, to the healer: “Status. Is he clean?”
The healer wizard frowned. “Fairly. I am inclined to think that he has no backdoors left, but… I would like to run him through more diagnostics.”
“We may not have the luxury,” Naomi said, her eyes still fixed on Nathi. “The decoy that we have left to mask his absence cannot hold forever. It is getting anxious.”
Left where? At the castle?
“Am I going back?” he said.
Naomi narrowed her eyes. “Afraid? You should be.”
As if from far away, he saw his avatar shake his head in a no. “Yes. But it’s irrelevant.” My life is nothing, all the centuries of it. “I have to go back to save the girl.”
Naomi’s eyes bore into him. “We aren’t like your former order; we can’t order you to go back. We cannot make you go. Do you understand the risk?”
“I do.” He nodded.
“You can be retaken. You already know what it means. We cannot even trust you with the plan of our attack. We’ll have to erase memories—again.” The woman’s presence was overpowering. “We cannot make you do it. Do you understand?”
If he still had a throat, it would have been parched. It was his choice.
“I do,” he said.
“You may not, in the end, be able to rescue her. Your sacrifice may be for nothing, and you shall remain in mental slavery—perhaps, forever. Do you understand?”
He felt a quietly supporting presence of his personette—and her anxiety.
“I do,” Nathi repeated for the third time. “I must try to save her.” From his former owners trying to enslave her mind. “I know how.”
“Yes! I knew it!” Rina sent on their private channel.
For the first time, Nathi saw Naomi smile.
5
WHEN NATHI LOOKED BACK AT HIMSELF—THE SHELL that they had left behind, to keep the castle unaware of his absence—he did it with entirely new eyes. To look was to arrive, for Nathi once again was turned into a pulsing ray of light, beamed back into the castle from the military base of his new friends in orbit around Jupiter. But when he stepped back into the thin shell of his external interfaces, Nathi knew he had to die. No one could blame him for the