It was a good thing we got rid of him then. Minutes later, our
instruments detected ships within a quarter of a million miles, and the
alert was sounded. Shortly afterwards, we made positive identification:
the Io gang!
Naomi and I quarreled for a second over strategy. Should we split up,
each leader piloting her own ship and responsible for half the fleet?
Or should the two of us occupy one ship? I insisted on the latter, and
when Naomi disagreed I knocked her unconscious with the butt of my whip
and dragged her into my own Spacer coupe. Ordnance had worked fast. It
was fully equipped for battle.
I ordered our entire fleet into attack formation. Together we zoomed up
to meet the oncoming enemy, ninety of our spaceships to a hundred and
ten of theirs.
I rocketed out in front of my fleet. The boys had begun firing. Their
missiles exploded in space like brilliant fireworks, multicolored
bursts on all sides of us. I signalled my girls to commence firing,
launching our first missile at point-blank thousand-mile range.
It scored a direct hit, exploding an Io ship to comet dust. I felt
serenely happy. I wanted to share my feeling of triumph with Naomi who
still lay unconscious on the cabin floor.
"Hey, girl, wake up! We're in combat!"
She stirred, started to regain her senses. Her eyes fluttered. Just as
they opened our ship exploded to oblivion.
* * * * *
This was familiar, this coming out of sleep with infinitely tender
caresses of light, in a vacuum tube the exact shape of your naked
body, a tube that dissolved at the exact instant of awakening into a
warm epidermal glow, while the bee-like humming faded into silence and
only the barest trace of hyacinth scent lingered in the nostrils. It
had happened before. How many times? Once? Twice? Three times? All my
limbs felt supremely relaxed as after sedation. All my thoughts were
clear and calm as a hidden spring on a wooded hillside. Earth summer.
Timeless.
Abruptly the marble slab felt cold against my back and the spell was
broken. I sat up too suddenly, for a monitor voice said, reassuringly:
"Have no fear, young lady. You have awakened in the Matrix Center
on Ganymede. There, you will recall, you at some time in the past
commissioned us to make a vibration pattern of your total physical,
mental and spiritual self.
"You did this," the recording continued, "against the possibility that,
at some future time, accident or the unavoidable hazards of honor would
result in your organically premature death. And this has come to pass.
But, by means of your matrix, you have escaped dissolution. You are an
exact duplicate of your former self in all but the most minor respects.
"Congratulations on your good fortune, and welcome to a new life where
we trust you will find the greatest measure of personal fulfillment."
As the recording ended, an attendant entered the room.
"Hello, Vera." She was smiling and pleasant voiced. "Want to put on
that white gown and come with me?"
I followed her in bare feet over carpeting soft as lamb wool, into an
office that was really not much like an office--more like a cozily
furnished living room. On the couch sat a balding man in a tweed suit.
Vague earlier memories gradually took shape. "Is this my placement
interview?"
The man smiled. "Yes. You have a wonderful memory net in that brain of
yours."
"Wasn't I supposed to remember?"
"It's usually one of the things erased in the duplication process. But
then, you were here not so very long ago."