The White Cat Zugzwang (Part 2)

The second and final instalment of this story by Guy T. Martland

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To catch up: The White Cat Zugzwang Part 1

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‘You will see the details of the mission now, just in case you have any questions. Then they will vanish until you need them again. All becoming clear?’

‘I can see it all now,’ D’patha had replied, marvelling at the glut of information which ran across his thoughts like mercury. Turning his attention back to the chess set, he’d moved quickly, castling his rook and king.

‘Good,’ the man said, stealing a quick glance at the move. ‘It’s just a simple operation as you can see, pick-up and drop-off. Easiest way to get our man from A to B given the circumstances. The Chreeth border is the problem, since they tightened things up. But they don’t pay much attention to animals crossing the borders. Cats are abundant in this area anyway, so there is nothing they could possibly suspect.’

‘A cat? How do you fit a human mind into a cat’s? Isn’t there an obvious size difference?’ asked D’patha.

‘A tight squeeze, certainly, but I’m assured it is possible. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here would I?’

‘The didactic, it’s disappearing. Already…,’ muttered D’Patha.

‘It will return when you need it. But you won’t remember my name or why you came here. In a few minutes, all we’ve spoken of will fall from your mind like gentle rain on a summer evening.’ The man’s nimble fingers once again moved over the wooden pieces. ‘Checkmate.’

A few moments later, D’patha was alone at the table, staring at the game he’d just lost, and wondering how he got there with only a few crystal clear instructions in his mind: a date and a time when he must return to this same place. Floating above these was the sum of money which would pay for the longed-for implants, provided he did the job.

---

A pale looking man, skin reflecting the dull light of the room, waits while the corona of electrodes are applied to his head. The tributary for the Marathrall Uploader which D’patha has accessed whirrs into action, slowly aligning itself to the field of the man’s brain.

D’patha feels for the man, prepared as he is to sacrifice his soul here to an uploaded eternity. The man needs the money for his wife and children and apparently the other options have been exhausted. D’patha doesn’t ask too much as he runs the set of physiological tests, ensuring his fitness as a receptacle. He does however make sure the credit is transferred and sees an expression of relief spreading over the man’s face.

Then, feeding into the Marathrall Uploader, he accesses the delta and in a moment the man’s soul is sucked away by the tributary and he crumples in his chair. Now D’patha must act quickly, and he uses knowledge which seems second nature to him to access the alien software patch. He visualises it in his mind as he pushes another command into the system. The cat’s back arches and it falls onto its side, becoming incontinent of urine. He ignores it and feeds the node into the waiting man’s vacated mind. D’patha is relieved to see the man breathing and he walks over to him, unties the straps which had held him in the chair and then shines a light into his eyes.

‘For God’s sake, stop that. I’m here OK? It worked.’

D’patha doesn’t reply but watches as he stands up and walks around the room.

‘My name, for the purposes of this exercise, is Davenport. And you are?’

‘D’patha.’

‘Well D’patha, thank you. You seem to be doing a good job so far. I presume that the drop off is now localising itself in your mind?’

D’patha searches his memory and finds a set of instructions, better imprinted than anything he has previously learnt. ‘Yes, it is all here.’

‘Let’s go then…’

‘Just one thing. How did it feel? Being inside the mind of…,’ he gestures to the flaccid cat, its coat matted with its own excretions. Davenport looks at D’patha, as if he is contemplating whether to bother telling him or not.

‘Imagine trying to run this,’ he says, picking up the chip which holds the nodal software, ‘in a computer fifty years old, which is coded for a totally different language. And then I think you might get the picture.’ Davenport pauses for a moment, as if to let this sink in, before continuing. ‘Now, as I’m sure your mind is telling you, we haven’t got much time to spare. The Uploader will start to cause a problem very soon, having had its system violated. This problem will be isolated to here, so we’d better move.’

D’patha looks around at the rented apartment and shrugs before following Davenport out of the door.

---

The microlight is carried upward by a thermal but then stabilised by its small motor. It stays below any detectable radar range, hugging the contours of the bare red hills below.

Davenport is strapped beneath D’patha and seems quite uncomfortable with the way D’patha is flying the machine. Every time they skim over a cliff face or round a hill he squirms, silently cursing the didactic that has enabled D’patha to fly like this.

They are heading towards a border of the Marathrall Strip, the border of the disputed province with the Volunteer country. The microlight, undetected, shoots over a precipice and a vast canyon is suddenly spread around them. Kilometres below D’patha follows amber cliff faces down to where they blur into a stretch of dense clouds. This finger of land which pushes into the province belongs to the Volunteers: this is Volunteer country. Following the instructions in his mind, D’patha releases a catch and watches Davenport fall. He shouts something back at D’patha as drifts downward, but the words are whipped away by the wind.

D’patha hovers over the area for a moment or two, waiting until Davenport is nothing but a speck of dust on the cloud surface. Just as he is about to head back inland, he catches some movement in the corner of his eye. Below, a machine is rising up from the clouds, like a whale rising from the sea. It leaps up and catches the speck of dust in its maw before once again plunging into the depths from which it came.

D’patha then powers the microlight inward, thinking dreamily of the implants he can buy, how he will now be able to mix with the Marathrall province’s elite, even play chess and win. The small machine darts over the ground like an insect and he is so lost in thought, he doesn’t see the swarm until the Peacekeepers are already on top of him.

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‘And then there is murder. Dropping a man to certain death in Volunteer territory. Although, the Peacekeepers and the Volunteers have yet to recover the body. I don’t expect we ever will,’ the magistrate says, eyes boring a hole in D’patha’s forehead.

‘This act was witnessed by the province’s Peacekeeper police force, whilst on a routine patrol of the border. Can you testify to this?’ the magistrate continues, directing his question to a member of the province’s United Federation police force. D’patha watches as the man speaking further seals his fate.

Then, a strange sense of recognition spreads through him. He knows the face of the speaker. He struggles to latch onto the memory: there are fragments of a conversation, something about the alien machine, about a game of chess. As D’patha tries to delve further into his own mind, his efforts are thwarted by the complexity of the memory. It is simply, irretrievable.

The magistrate drones on, but D’patha catches only fragments of his sentence: ‘… subversion and attempted destruction of the revered machine …viral insemination of the Uploader.’

Then he looks at the police witness’s face and knows, but it is too late and heavy hands pull him away, his sentence an eternity.

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As D’patha’s mind is sucked away from his body he feels a sensation of weightlessness. His soul free of its shackles spreads out, his thoughts lose coherence as they begin to dissipate. The tributary filters into the common delta and there he meets another mind, who by some strange occurrence is attempting to resist entrance to the Uploader. As their minds mix, D’patha becomes aware of his companion’s thoughts: the dedication to his wife and children, how he’d been subjected to uploading in order to raise money. Shocked to the point of repulsion, D’patha tries to pull his mind away, but the tide is too strong. Unharmoniously united the mind now continues on its travels across the delta and into the Uploader where it is consumed by the hive. And there, it loses its identity altogether.

THE END

Author’s note: 'There is a square called the Place for Hope in Agadir, Morrocco. On holiday, back in 2000, I sat there, drinking mint tea, watching locals play chess, cats lazing around the vicinity in patches of sun. The square wasn’t particularly attractive, in fact it had a Ballardian concrete feel to it, which did little to inspire any kind of hope. Pistachios were littering the floor around the tables. As I sat in contemplation, the metal carapaces of robots appeared and began clearing them away.

Later on I discovered that the real Place for Hope was next door, and I’d been sitting in a kind of open shopping centre. It was too late. This story had reached its conclusion.'

Author bio: Guy T Martland is the author of a few science fiction novels, one of which (The Scion) was briefly published. His short fiction has appeared in a number of places, including Perihelion SF, Albedo One, Bards & Sages Quarterly and Shoreline of Infinity. He lives in Dorset, England, close to where R L Stevenson wrote 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'. When he isn’t writing, he works as a pathologist and plays a nineteenth century violin (but not at the same time). At six foot eight inches in height (2.03m), he considers himself the tallest SF writer in the world.