Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“You have quite a supply of them. Expecting that many visitors?”

“It was to avoid that false conclusion that I used the term ‘several dozen,’” said Vadesh. “The large number is because that’s how many happened to survive and remain viable in stasis.”

“So you keep the facemasks in stasis,” said Rigg. “Like the voyagers in flight.”

“Someone’s been researching the starship,” said Vadesh.

“Yes, Umbo. And then he talked about what he learned.”

“Stasis and revival work almost identically for humans and facemasks, which is not a surprise, since these facemasks have been genetically designed for compatibility with humans.”

“Please get my facemask,” said Rigg. “Now.”

Vadesh left the room at once, and returned within the minute. “This one is as healthy as any other.”

“Then let’s . . .”

Rigg didn’t get to say “do it,” because the facemask flew out of the basin containing it. Did Vadesh fling it, or did the facemask somehow propel itself? Or had Rigg, without realizing it, bowed his head over the basin to look inside? He had only a split second to contemplate this question, and then there was agony and panic as his face was covered, his breath choked off, and tendrils inserted themselves with brutal irresistibility into his nostrils, his mouth, his ears and, most painful and frightening of all, his eyes.

This is irrevocable, he thought. My eyes are gone.

Then the tendrils reached through otic and optic nerves into his brain and the struggle began.

It was not like a tug of war. Not like a wrestling match. It was more like being lost in a maze. He could sense that his body was feeling things. Doing things. Yet he could not find his body, could not find the way to control his body.

It was as if the maze were constantly being changed so that nothing was in the same place twice, and barriers popped up where there had been no barriers before.

Pains came and went. His body needed to urinate. Then it did. It got up and walked, but not at Rigg’s command. It acted for its own reasons.

No, not its own reasons. The facemask’s reasons.

A rush of rejection swept over him; the feeling of hostility Rigg had seen in the faces of the people of Fall Ford when they gathered outside Nox’s house, intending to kill him in punishment for the death of Umbo’s little brother, whom Rigg had tried so hard to save. It was as if the facemask knew such a memory was there, and now used it to overwhelm Rigg with feelings and memories from his own past.

Rigg decided that this sudden emotional rush came because the facemask recognized that Rigg had somehow attempted to assert control over his own body. When it got up and moved at the facemask’s command, there had been no resistance from Rigg. But Rigg’s thought that his body was moving at the facemask’s command must have felt, to the facemask, like resistance.

My thoughts are my weapons in this war. What did Loaf say? Something about its being pointless to try to give orders to his own body, at first anyway. So the resistance is in my thoughts. In making my brain hold the thoughts I put there, and not letting them be swept away in the feelings and desires the facemask forces on me.

Easy enough to think this thought; hard to hold on to it when every desire of his body cried out for his attention.

It was like the Wall. Only ins

tead of anguish and despair, what threatened to overwhelm him was thirst and hunger and lust, the urges of elimination, the inchoate yearnings of an adolescent boy.

In the end of this silent war, it turned out that the vulnerability of the facemask came from the sheer sameness of its weaponry. Once Rigg was swept by all the desires of his body, over and over, he began simply to get used to them, and through it all his mind remained his own, and it held the thoughts he reached for.

He opened his eyes.

He knew that what was opening were not his eyes at all, but the new eyes created by the facemask. But it was his nerves that controlled them, his brain that received and interpreted the signals from those eyes.

Whatever the facemask was, it was now part of himself.

Did that mean the facemask had failed?

No, it meant that the facemask was broken to his will, like a horse to its rider; it was still itself, and its needs would still be met. It would be alive. It would reproduce and continue, which was the goal of every kind of life. The native fauna of Garden was alive in this facemask, and had become a part of Rigg. It was Rigg’s servant, yes, but Rigg would now see the world through its eyes, and its needs and desires would form a part of his decision-making. It would not die until he died; he would never remove it; it had found a home embedded in his flesh.

But I am still Rigg Sessamekesh.

No. Not Sessamekesh. Simply Rigg. Rigg the pathfinder. Rigg the man of Garden. Rigg the keeper of the ships’ logs.