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signal dancing across a miniature opto. "That's you. You've been broadcasting
it all along, I suspect. I've been told it's a very deceptive carrier wave,
near impossible to detect without sophisticated sensing equipment. You're
transmitting, Eric, without being aware of it.
"There are two Syrax ships orbiting Earth right now. Not in the same orbit as
GATE Station: that would be too obvious. They're far away, but not behind the
curve of the planet. Which one do you think you're transmitting to?"
"I don't know," Eric mumbled. His free hand went to his head, touched
gingerly, as a man might caress a live bomb. "I didn't know I was doing that.
I don't feel anything. Please, you've got to listen to me!
Maybe I am what you say, a construction of the Syrax, but I'm an independent
construct. I'm not a slave.
They couldn't make me a slave or their deception wouldn't have worked...." he
broke off.
"As well as it has?" Uberaba finished for him. "Seems to me you've
accomplished almost everything they planned for you."
"No! I am independent. Circumstances have brought me here, yes, maybe as they
intended, but I've acted alone in everything."
"You know the secret of the GATE. You haven't broadcast it yet. We know
because we've deciphered and can interpret the carrier wave they're using. But
you've learned it. You ran it through a terminal." He gestured across the
room. "That terminal. It's been checked. No one knows how you managed to crack
the codes so fast, but...."
"You forget that I worked for the company that designed many of the
components," Eric told him softly.
Uberaba nodded, looked satisfied. "So subtle. Subtle and patient. They
function on a different time-scale than we do."
"Let us go through the GATE," Eric pleaded with him. "It's ready. Just give us
a second and let us go across to Eden. You know we can't come back. The GATE'S
a one-way trip to anonymity."
"The Syrax probably have a good idea where Eden is located, and their ships
are better than ours. They could go there, pick you up, and drain the
information out of you. They're very patient."
"Patience won't be enough," Eric pointed out excitedly. "One of their
starships would take a hundred years to reach Eden, even if they do know where
it is." He did not add that he was certain they did know, because, he realized
suddenly, he knew. How did he know? It was part of his stored knowledge,
information sequestered in the back of his brain that lay dormant until
required.
What else did he know that he didn't know he knew?
"I'd be dead by then and..." he stopped in mid-sentence and a look of
puzzlement spread across his
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There was a voice in his head, soft and feathery. Actually it wasn't a voice
so much as an aural projection. It wasn't telepathy; the Syrax were not
telepathic, but rather mind speaking to mind via an infinitesimally small
communications device implanted in his skull.
He understood everything clearly. The voice was calm, polite, and friendly:
everything the voice of a best friend ought to be. It told Eric what he had to
do. Just push a little with this part of his brain. Push gently, there and
thusly, and he and Lisa would be teleported to safety aboard the Syrax
starship. Then they would be safe forever from the malicious, primitive
actions of human beings and could live out their natural lives in comfort and
peace. The Syrax saw nothing immoral in rewarding a device for a job well
done.
Push, the voice urged reassuringly, just a little.
At the same instant the tiny monitor the bioengineer was showing Eric let out
an electronic squeal.
Uberaba and Orema shouted simultaneously. Eric wasn't certain what they said
because he was too busy reacting.
The reaction was instinctive and involved a mind-push, utilizing another bit
of information that had been thoughtfully stored in his brain. It was not a
teleport-push, however. It jumped out from Eric toward his enemies, and they
all went down, falling over one another like a box of toy soldiers.
It was quite a push, because as the security team collapsed, every readout in
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