The being men had once called Tisiphone roamed the corridors of her host's mind and marveled at what she found. Its vast, dim caverns crackled with the golden fire of dreams, and even its sleeping power was amazing. It had been far too long since last Tisiphone touched a mortal mind, and she had never been much interested in those she had invaded then. They had been targets, sources of information, tools, and prey, not something to be tasted and sampled, for she was an executioner, not a philosopher.
But things had changed. She was alone and diminished, and no one had sent her to punish this mortal; she had been summoned by the mind in which she wandered, and she needed it. Needed it as a focus and avatar for her weakened self, and so she searched its labyrinthine passages, finding places to store her self, sampling its power and fingering its memories.
It was so different. The last human whose thoughts she'd touched had been—the shepherd in Cappadocia? No, Cassander of Macedon, that tangled, ambitious murderer. Now there had been a mind of power, for all its evil. Yet it was no match for the strength, clarity, and knowledge of this mind. Man had changed over her millennia of sleep, and even cool Athena or clever-fingered Haphaestus might have envied the lore and skill mortals had attained.
But even more than its knowledge, it was the power of this mind which truly astounded her—the focused will, crystal lucidity . . . and ferocity. No wonder that echo, that flash of mirrored power, had troubled her dreams, for there was much of her in this Alicia DeVries. This mortal could be as implacable as she herself, Tisiphone sensed, and as deadly, and that was amazing. Were all mortals thus, if only she had stopped to see it so long ago? Or had more than man's knowledge changed while she slept?
Yet there were differences between them. She swooped through memories, sampled convictions and beliefs, and had she had lips, she would have smiled in derision at some of the foolishness she found. She and her selves had not been bred for things like love and compassion—those had no meaning for such as they, and even less this concept of "justice." It caught at her, for it had its whetted sharpness, its tangental contact with what she was, yet she sensed the dangerous contradictions at its core. It clamored for retribution, yes, but balance blunted its knife-sharp edge. Extenuation dulled its certitude, and its self-deluding emphasis on "guilt" and "innocence" and "proof" weakened its determination.
She studied the idea, tasting the dynamic tension which held so many conflicting elements in poised balance, and the familiar hunger at its heart only made it more alien. Her selves had been crafted to punish, made for vengeance, and guilt or innocence had no bearing on her mission. It was a bitter-tasting thing, this "justice," a chill bitterness in the hot, sweet blood-taste, and she rejected it. She turned away contemptuously, and bent her attention on other gems in this treasure-vault mind.
They were heaped and piled, glittering measurelessly, and she savored the unleashed violence of combat with weapons Zeus himself might have envied. They had their own lightning bolts, these mortals, and she watched through her host's eyes, tasting the jagged riptides of terror and fury controlled by training and science and harnessed to purpose. She was apt to violence, this Alicia DeVries . . . and yet, even at the heart of her battle fury, there was that damnable sense of detachment. That watching presence that mourned the hot blood of her own handiwork and wept for her foes even as she slew them.
Tisiphone spat in mental disgust at that potential weakness. She must be wary. This mortal had sworn herself to her service, but Tisiphone had sworn herself to Alicia DeVries' purpose in return, and this mind was powerful and complex, a weapon which might turn in her hand if she drove it too hard.
Other memories flowed about her, and these were better, more suited to her needs. Memories of loved ones, held secure and precious at her host's core like talismans against her own dark side. Anchors, helping her cling to her debilitating compassion. But they were anchors no more. They had become whips, made savage by newer memories of rape and mutilation, of slaughter and wanton cruelty and the broken bodies of dead love. They tapped deep into the reservoirs of power and purpose, stoking them into something recognized and familiar. For beneath all the nonsense about mercy and justice, Tisiphone looked into the mirror of Alicia DeVries' soul and saw . . . herself.
* * *
Jade eyes opened. Darkness pressed against the spartan room's window, moaning with the endless patience of Mathison's winter wind, but dim lights cast golden pools upon the overhead. Monitors chirped gently, almost encouragingly, and Alicia drew a deep, slow breath.
She turned her head on her pillow, studying the quiet about her, and saw the rifle on her bedside table. The weapon gleamed like memory itself in the dimness, and it should have brought the agony crashing in upon her.
It didn't. Nothing did, and that was . . . wrong. The images were there, clear and lethal in every brutal detail. Everyone she loved had been destroyed—more than destroyed, butchered with sick, premeditated sadism—and the agony of it did not overwhelm her.
She raised a hand to her forehead and frowned, thoughts clearer than they ought to be yet oddly detached. Memories flickered, merciless and sharp as holovids, yet remote, as if seen through the time-slowing armorplast of the tick. And there was something there at the last, teasing her . . .
Her hand froze, and her eyes widened as memory of her final madness came abruptly. Voices in her head! Nonsense. And yet—she looked about the silent room once more, and knew she should never have lived to see it.
<Of course you should have,> a cold, clear voice said. <I promised you vengeance, and to avenge yourself, you must live.>
She stiffened, eyes suddenly huge in the dimness, yet even now there was no panic in their depths. They were cool and still, for the terror of that silent voice eddied against a shield of glass. She sensed its presence, felt it prickle in her palms, yet it could not touch her.
"Who—what—are you?" she asked the emptiness, and a silent laugh quivered deep at her core.
<Have mortals forgotten us, indeed? Ah, how fickle you are! You may call me Tisiphone.>
"Tisiphone?" There was an elusive familiarity to that name, but—
<There, now,> the voice murmured like crystal, singing on the edge of shattering, and its effort to soothe seemed alien to it. <Once your kind called us the Erinyes, but that was long, long ago. Three of us, there were: Alecto, Megaira . . . and I. I am the last of the Furies, Little One.>
Alicia's eyes opened even wider, and then she closed them tight. The simplest answer was that she'd been right the first time. She must be mad. That certainly made more sense than holding a conversation with something out of Old Earth's mythology! Yet she knew she wasn't, and her lips twitched at the thought. Didn't they say that a crazy person knew she wasn't mad? And who but a madwoman would feel so calm at a moment like this?
<For all your skills, your people have become most blind. Have you lost the ability to believe anything you cannot see or touch? Do not your "scientists" deal daily with things they can only describe?>
"Touché," Alicia murmured, then shook herself. Immobilizing tractor collars circled her left leg at knee and hip, lighter than a plasticast yet dragging at her as she eased up on her elbows. She raked hair from her eyes and looked around until she spied the bed's power controls, then reached out her right hand and slipped her Gamma receptor over the control linkage. She hadn't used it in so long she had to think for almost ten full seconds before the proper neural links established themselves, but then the bed purred softly, rising against her shoulders. She settled into a sitting position and folded her hands in her lap, and her neck craned as her eyes flitted about the room once more.
"Let's say I believe in you . . . Tisiphone. Where are you?"
<Your wit is sharper than that, Alicia DeVries.>
"You mean," Alicia said very carefully, a tiny tremor of fear oozing through the sheet of glass, "that you're inside my head?"
<Of course.>
"I see." She inhaled deeply. "Why aren't I hanging from the ceiling and gibbering, then?"
<It would scarcely help our purpose for me to permit that. Not,> the voice added a bit dryly, <that you are not trying to do precisely that.>
"Well," Alicia surprised herself with a smile despite the madness which had engulfed her, "I guess that would be the rational thing to do."
<Rationality is an over-valued commodity, Little One. Madness has its place, yet it does make speech difficult, does it not?>
"I imagine it would." She pressed her hands to her temples, feeling the familiar angularity of her subcutaneous Alpha receptor against her right palm, and moistened her lips. "Are you . . . the reason I don't hurt more?" She wasn't speaking of physical pain, and the voice knew it.
<Indeed. You are a soldier, Alicia DeVries. Does a warrior maddened by grief attain his goal, or die on his enemy's blade? Loss and hatred are potent, but they must be used. I will not let them use you. Not yet.>
Alicia closed her eyes again, lips trembling, grateful for the pane of glass between her and her loss. She felt endless, night-black grief waiting to suck her to destruction beyond whatever shield this Tisiphone had erected, and it frightened her. Yet there was resentment in her gratitude, as if she'd been robbed of something rightly hers—something as precious as it was cruel.
She sucked in another breath and lowered her hands once more. Either Tisiphone existed, or she truly was mad, and she might as well act on the assumption that she was sane. She opened her hospital gown and traced the red line down her chest and the ones across her abdomen. There was no pain, and quick-heal was doing its job—the incisions were half-healed already and would vanish entirely in time—but they confirmed the damage she'd taken. She let the gown fall closed and leaned back against her pillows in the quiet room.
"How long ago was I hit?"
<Time is something mortals measure better than I, Little One, and it does not exist where you and I have been, but three days have passed since they brought you to this place.>
" 'Where you and I have been'?"
<You were dying, and I am not what once I was. My power has waned with the passing of my other selves, and I was ever more apt to wound than heal. Since I could not make you whole, I took you to a place where time has no business until the searchers came to find you.>
"Would you care to explain that a bit better?"
<Would you care to explain blue to a man born blind?>
"You sound like one of those assholes from intelligence."
<No. They lied to you; I know what I did, and would tell you if you could grasp my meaning.>
Alicia pursed her lips, surprised by Tisiphone's quick understanding.
<How should I not understand? I have spent days examining your memories, Little One. I know of your Colonel Watts.>
"Not my Colonel Watts." Alicia's voice was suddenly cold, and a spurt of rage took Tisiphone by surprise, squirting past the clear shield, as Alicia remembered the utter chaos of the Shallingsport Raid. She shook it away, suppressing it with a skill the Fury could not have bettered.
"All right, you're here. Why? What are you going to do?"
<You asked for vengeance, and you shall have it. We will find your enemies, you and I, and destroy them.>
"Just the two of us? When the entire Empire can't?" Alicia's laugh was not pleasant. "What makes you think we can do that?"
<This,> the voice said softly, and Alicia's head snapped up. Her lips drew back from locked teeth, and a direcat's snarl caught at her throat. Rage flooded her veins, loosed from beyond the shield within her, distilled and pure and hotter than a star's heart. Loss and grief were in that rage, but they were only its fuel, not its heat. Its ferocity wrenched at her like fists of fire, and panic touched her as her augmentation began to respond.
But then it vanished, and she slumped back, panting and beaded with sweat. Her heart raced, and she was weak and drained, like a chemist's flask emptied of acid. Yet something quivered within her, pacing her pulse like an echo of her rage. Determination—no, more than determination. Purpose which went beyond the implacable to the inevitable, ridiculing the very thought that any power in the universe might deflect it.
<You begin to see, Little One, yet that was but your anger; you have not yet tasted mine. I am rage—your rage, and my own, and all the rage that ever was or will be—and skilled in its use. We will find them. On that you have my word, which has never been broken. And when we find them, you will have the strength of my arm, which has never failed. If I am less than once I was, I remain more than you can imagine; you will have your vengeance.>
"God," Alicia whispered, pressing trembling hands to her temples once more. An icicle of terror shivered through her—not of Tisiphone, but of herself. Of the limitless capacity for destruction she had tasted within her fury. Or—she swallowed—was it within her Fury?
"I—" she began, and chopped off as a man in nursing whites charged through the door and skidded to a stop when he saw her sitting up in bed. His eyes widened, then dropped to the bedside monitors, and he lifted a neural lead from the central console. He pressed it to the terminal on his temple, and Alicia hid a twisted smile of sudden understanding. Her vital signs must have gone off the scale when that bolt of distilled rage ripped through her.
The nurse lowered the lead and regarded her with puzzlement. And with something else. There were questions in his eyes, fusing with sympathy into a peculiar tension his professional façade couldn't quite hide. He glanced away from her, eyes darting for just a moment to the intercom panel, and Alicia swallowed a groan. Idiot! Of course they'd left the com open! What must he think after hearing her half of the insane conversation with Tisiphone?
<Shall I take the memory of it from him?>
"Can you?" Alicia spoke aloud out of sheer reflex, then cursed herself as the nurse took an involuntary half-step away from her.
"Can I what, Captain DeVries?"
"Uh . . . can you tell me how long I've been here?" she improvised frantically.
"Three days, Ma'am," he said.
<You need not speak aloud for me to hear you, Little One,> Tisiphone said at the same instant, and Alicia wanted to tear her hair and scream at both of them. The concerned caution in the nurse's voice vibrated bizarrely in her ears, cut through with the amusement in that silent mental whisper.
"Thank you," she said aloud, and <Could you do that? Make him forget?>
<Once, certainly. Now . . .> She felt the strong impression of a mental shrug. <I could try, if you can touch him.>
Alicia glanced at the wary nurse and smothered a totally inappropriate giggle. <No way! The poor guy's convinced I'm out of my mind, and he called me by my rank, so they must know I'm a drop commando. I'm surprised he's still here, and he'll jump out of his skin if I try to grab him. Talk about a dangerous lunatic—! Besides, they probably had a recorder on it.>
<Recorder?> Mental fingers plucked the concept from her mind. <Ah. It seems I have much yet to learn about this "technology." Will it matter?>
<How do I know? It depends on just how balmy they think I am. Now be quiet a minute.>
A sense of someone else's surprise echoed within her, as if Tisiphone were unused to hearing orders from a mere mortal, and she suppressed another manic grin in favor of a reassuring smile.
"Thank you," she repeated aloud. "I wonder . . . I can see it's the middle of the night, but could I see the duty doctor?"
"Surgeon Captain Okanami is on his way here right now, Ma'am. In fact, I was waiting for him when—that is . . ." His voice trailed off, and Alicia smiled again.
Poor guy. No wonder he's already called in the big guns. There he was, listening to the prize booby blathering away to herself, and then her vitals went crazy. Too.
"I see. Well, in that case—"
The opening door cut her off in mid-inanity. A Fleet captain came through it, his stride brisk but measured, though something suggested he found it difficult to keep it that way. His Medical Branch caduceus glittered in the dim light, and he paused as if surprised to see her sitting up. No, not to see her sitting up; to see her looking rational. Odd, she didn't feel as if she looked rational. One of his hands made a tiny shooing motion, and the nurse tried to hide his relief as he vanished like smoke.
"Well, now," Captain Okanami said, folding his arms across his chest as the door closed, "I'm glad to see you with us again, Captain DeVries."
Yeah, and surprised as hell. She hid the thought behind a smile and nodded back, watching him while she wondered what he was really thinking.
"You're lucky to be alive," he went on gently, "but I'm afraid—"
"I know." She cut him off before he could complete the sentence. "I know," she repeated more softly.
"Yes, well." Okanami looked at the floor and unfolded his left arm to tug at an earlobe. "I'm not very good at expressing my condolences, Captain. Never have been—a failing in a physician, I suppose—but if there's anything I can do, please tell me."
"I will." She looked down at her own hands and cleared her throat again. "I take it you've figured out I'm a Cadrewoman?"
"Yes. It came as quite a surprise, but, yes, we figured it out. It leaves us with a bit of a problem, too, medically speaking."
"I can imagine. I'm just glad you didn't hit any landmines."
"Actually, we did." Her eyes flicked up, and he shrugged. "Nothing we couldn't handle—" she had the definite impression that remark was sliding over slippery ground "—and we've got partial specs on your augmentation. I don't anticipate any more problems before the Cadre med team gets here."
"Cadre med team?" she asked quickly. "Coming here?"
"Of course. I'm not competent to handle your case, Captain DeVries, so Admiral Gomez called them in. I understand there was a Cadre detachment at Alexandria and that they're en route aboard a Crown dispatch boat."
"I see." She chewed on that thought. It had been five years since she'd seen a fellow Cadreman. She'd believed—hoped—she never would again.
"We really don't have a choice, I'm afraid. There are too many holes in the data we've got."
"I see," she repeated more normally. "And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime, I'm keeping you right where you are. We had to do a lot of repair work, as I'm sure you've already realized, and I want someone versed in Cadre augmentation to check it over." She nodded, and he cocked his head. "Are you experiencing any discomfort? I wouldn't want to get into any fancy meds, but I suppose we'd be fairly safe to try old-fashioned aspirin."
"No, no discomfort."
"Good." His relief was evident. "I wasn't sure, but I'd hoped your augmentation would take care of that. I'm glad to see it is."
"Uh, yes," she said, but a quick check of her pharmacopoeia processor told her he was wrong. <Are you doing that?> she asked the voice.
<Of course.>
<Thanks.>
"What's your prognosis?" she asked Okanami after a moment.
"You've responded well to the surgery, and to the quick-heal," Okanami said. "In the long term, you'll probably want to consider replacement for your spleen, but you're coming along very nicely for now. The bone damage to your leg was extreme, and the repairs there are going to need several weeks yet, but the rest—"
He waved a dismissive hand and, Alicia noted, carefully did not discuss her mental state. Tactful of him.
He moved a few strides to his right, glancing at her monitor displays, and made a few quick notes on the touchpad, then turned back to her.
"I realize you've just waked up, Captain DeVries—"
"Please, call me Alicia. I haven't been 'Captain DeVries' in years."
"Of course." He smiled with genuine warmth, eyes twinkling with just a touch of sadness. "Alicia. As I say, I realize you've just waked up, but what you really need more than anything else just now is rest. Even if you're not feeling it, this kind of surgery really takes it out of you, quick-heal or no, and you weren't in very good shape before we started."
"I know." She eased back down in the bed, and he pursed his lips.
"If there's anything you'd like to talk about," he began hesitantly, then fell silent as she waved a hand. He nodded and began to turn away.
<Touch him,> a voice said in her mind, so suddenly she twitched in surprise at the intensity of its demand.
"Uh, Doctor." He stopped and looked back at the sound of her voice, and she held out her right hand. "Thank you for putting me back together."
"My pleasure." He gripped her hand and smiled, and she smiled back, but shock threatened to wipe it from her lips. Her hand tingled with the power of the spark which had leapt between them at the moment of contact. God, was the man nerve-dead? How could he have missed that flare of power?!
But that was nothing beside what followed it. A column of fire flowed down her arm and licked out through her skin. She looked at their joined hands, expecting to see flames darting from her pores, but there were no flames. Only the heat . . . and under it a crackle that coalesced suddenly into something she almost recognized. A barrier went down, like an opening door or a closing circuit, and the fire in her arm flared high and faded into a familiar intangible tingle. It was like smelling a color or seeing a sound, indescribable to anyone who had never experienced it, but she had experienced it. Or experienced its like, at any rate.
Information spilled up her arm, crisp and clear as any her Alpha receptor had ever pulled from a tactical net, and that was impossible. Yet it was happening—happening in a heartbeat, like a burst transmission from a forward scout but less focused, more general and disorganized.
Concern. Uncertainty. Satisfaction at her physical condition and deep, gnawing worry about her mental state. Discomfort over his decision not to mention intelligence's interest. Burning wonder over how she'd survived untended and undetected in the snow. Genuine distress for the deaths of her family, and an even greater distress that she seemed so calm and collected. Too calm, he was thinking, and I have to listen to that recording. Maybe—
He released her hand and stepped back. Clearly, he had sensed nothing at all out of the ordinary, and his hand rose in a small wave.
"I'll see you in the morning, Cap—Alicia," he said gently. "Go back to sleep if you can."
She nodded and closed her eyes as he withdrew . . . and knew sleep was the last thing she was going to be able to do.