Rodney gave a little superior-sounding laugh.
“What are you doing now, Mister Quick?”
Danal watched as Supervisor came up silently from behind. She moved as if partially in a trance, floating between the vats, but with a presence about her that made her seem to emanate from the walls, the floor, the lights, everywhere The Net could see.
Rodney jumped, and Danal could see the color drain from his face. But the tech composed his face into a serious expression without missing a beat and turned to face Supervisor. “I’m testing his muscle reflexes, madam. He seems to be coordinating well.”
“Bullshit.” Her voice carried no excitement, no anger, just a flat statement that exposed the technician as a liar, allowing no room for question. “Mister Nathans said to give Danal special treatment. If you fail, I am going to destroy you.”
The tech spoke defensively. “This Servant is my very best work, madam! Look where I installed the synHeart unit: only half the scar you’d expect. You saw the wound where the neo-Satanists hacked out his heart!”
“Just do your job, and do it adequately, Mister Quick.” Supervisor smiled at him, “Try to survive as long as you can.”
Rodney made no comment, but Danal noticed faint beads of sweat begin to pop out of the tech’s visible pores.
At the mention of the scar, Danal stared at his body, looking at the white line at the center of his chest where the—knife—had cut. His past seemed to be swathed thickly in cheesecloth, hidden from his view, and he wondered—but any answers rising in his memory melted like snow-flakes in a fire. He wanted to reach out and finger the scar, but his muscles could not find the volition to do so.
Supervisor stood in silence for a long moment, apparently to let Rodney fidget and sweat for as long as possible. “Well, Mister Quick? Is he ready?”
“Yes, most certainly. As always, promptly on the deadline. A routine resurrection, madam.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Supervisor held out her right hand, running her fingers along the primary Net keyboard tattooed on the palm. Ten keys, each with five functions coded to the five specific fingerprints on Supervisor’s left hand, made it possible for her to type fifty different characters. She input the proper sequence that linked her to the vast resources of The Net. After she had reoriented herself to her new position as a small blip in the enormous computer database, Supervisor activated the Net-compatible scanners implanted in her eye. Danal endured her inspection as she looked at him through machine eyes.
“Glycerin levels all wrong. And I see a glitch in his brain-wave pattern. Dammit! The bacteria mutated—you weren’t watching him, Mister Quick.” She seemed unaccustomed to using an angry tone of voice, and the words came out awkward, but still threatening.
“Yes! Yes, I was, madam! The nutrient bath was as clear as can be—yellow like chicken soup!” One, and only one, drop of sweat ran down the side of Rodney’s forehead.
“I somehow doubt you saw nothing unusual. Even you aren’t quite that stupid. You’ve been licking the glass on the female tanks again, haven’t you?”
“No, madam!” He sounded indignant. “You know how attentive I’ve been, especially with this Servant.”
Supervisor abruptly ignored Rodney and turned to the placid-looking Servant who stood damp and naked under the harsh lights. “Danal, what do you remember from your past life?”
Danal wrinkled his forehead a little, but stood silent.
“He’s brain-damaged! Aww, shit!” Rodney gasped to himself. Nonchalantly, but with amazing speed, Supervisor boxed him in the ear to silence him.
“Nothing,” Danal finally answered. “I don’t remember anything.”
Supervisor paused, looking somewhat surprised. Rodney breathed a loud sigh of relief and put his hands on his hips, trying to regain a semblance of control. “Why did you take so long to answer?”
“I was thinking.” The words flowed easily through his vocal cords now. After an oblivion of rest, he wanted to stretch his voice, to shout, to sing. But his body didn’t move. He stood and waited, like a mannequin.
Supervisor and the tech looked at him strangely for a moment.
“Servant, Command: Input Mode.” Supervisor’s fingers raced across the tattooed keyboard on her palm.
Danal’s body responded of its own volition, controlled by the microprocessor. His arms and legs snapped to attention, and he opened his mind to receive.
In less than a second The Net scanned Danal’s new identity and confirmed his name and the name of his Master, Vincent Van Ryman. After a short pause, short even for the microprocessor’s view of time, bytes of information filed onto his memory, and his parched mind rapidly absorbed the data.
The Net gave him nuggets of his Master Van Ryman’s history and habits, presumably so Danal could be a better Servant for him. All at once, and without time to sort through the facts and arrange them in any order, Danal learned that Vincent Van Ryman lived a comfortable life from the profits of when his father Stromgaard had sold his share of Resurrection, Inc. to Francois Nathans. Protected by elaborate Intruder Defense Systems, Van Ryman lived alone in an eccentrically antique home.
Not alone.
What about Julia?
Julia? Danal wondered. The thought had come to him from the far reaches of his mind, whispering at the corners of his ears like memories shouting at him through miles of dense fog. The thought came with no explanation, no further details—who was Julia? Other memories, a seething pot of déjà vu boiled far beneath the surface of his brain, out of the microprocessor’s reach.
Another pause in the microprocessor’s slowed-down time—Danal felt The Net picking around in his mind, double-checking, making sure of his identity. Danal kept his thoughts vividly aware, though he didn’t know what to expect, or how he would know if something went wrong. His core-programming penetrated deeper than instinct, molding his life, making him know that he was not to ask questions, not to think, not to feel.
He suspected that he already knew as much as a Servant should know about his Master, but The Net divulged yet another file, this one coded for a much higher-level password.
Vincent Van Ryman was the leader of the neo-Satanists,
not anymore!
a secret society that had adapted ancient Satanism to the context of modern technology. Van Ryman had, however, denounced his connections with the group, and had become one of its strongest opponents—but recently he had returned to the fold again, with a zeal and vehemence that overshadowed even his initial fervor.
impossible!
Danal’s head swam with a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts, ghosts of memory fleeing like shadows whenever he tried to focus on them. He was a Servant. His mind was a clean slate, polished smooth by passage through death and back. He had nothing of his past.
Or, more likely, he was not able to access the memories … but he knew they existed, closeted away somewhere. And these spurious glitches of thought jumping out helter-skelter onto his forebrain—did they flash back to a life that never existed? Who knew what dreams and fantasies a brain could summon and create during the deepest sleep of all?
By the time Danal had assimilated all this, Supervisor’s finger still hadn’t had enough time to lift itself from the keypad on her palm. “Completed,” she said to no one in particular. “Servant: What is your name?”
“My name is Danal.”
“Who is your Master?”
“Vincent Van Ryman.”
“See, I told you he