Betrayer of Worlds Read Online Free PDF Page B

there
had
been dreams, that the autodoc had been exercising his engrams, maintaining memories for a brain otherwise too inactive, or too drug-addled, to do it for itself.
    Nessus’ polite fiction made the Puppeteer seem less alien.
    None of the controls were where Louis expected them. Was this a Puppeteer ’doc? He found a panic button and slapped it. The dome began to retract.
    “Ah, you are back,” Nessus said. The Puppeteer stood far across the room. “Do you feel better?”
    Better? The burn scars had vanished from Louis’s left side. He raised a hand for study and it was rock-steady. His fingers, splayed, showed no hint of tremor. He didn’t sweat and he wasn’t nauseous or dizzy. There was none of the anxiety and depression that had all but crushed him between pills, no crawling-of-the-skin portent of seizures waiting to strike him down.
    Feel better? Finagle, Louis felt
terrific.
    Sitting up, he grabbed the unfamiliar jumpsuit that lay draped across the bottom of the ’doc. He didn’t want to think about the disgusting state of the clothes he had worn aboard.
    “I feel much better, Nessus. Thank you.”
    “There is much to talk about.”
    Time now to reveal the fine print? Louis tried and failed to care. Even the air, spicy and exotic, rich with some Puppeteer scent, shouted that he was on an adventure. Stepping out of the ’doc, he felt agile and light on his feet. He dressed quickly, while Nessus studied his hooves. “Where are we going, Nessus?”
    “To begin, a world called Hearth.”
    “I never heard of it.”
    “Nor have you heard its true name.” Nessus sang something evocative of oboes and French horns, of cellos and harps.
    A few bars, no more, but the music sent shivers down Louis’s spine. The chords spoke somehow of home and belonging. And he realized—
    He had no idea of the way home! To
any
home, to
any
world on which he had ever set foot. Earth, Home, Fafnir, Wunderland: he could remember neither their positions nor the pulsar landmarks by which to locate them. More than exercised, his engrams had been . . . examined. Pilfered.
    “You’ve tampered with my brain!” Louis roared. The Puppeteer seemed alien again. No, more than alien. Worse than alien. Monstrous. “You wanted to
use
my mind. Are you crazy?”
    Even as Louis protested, a calmer part of him chided. He was at Nessus’ mercy. He had
put
himself at Nessus’ mercy. So never mind the immaturity of losing his temper—and where had
that
come from?—this behavior was dangerous.
    Nessus dipped one head into a pocket of his sash. (Preparing to vanish again, trapping Louis in this cargo hold to reconsider his behavior?) “It was necessary,” Nessus said with his other head. “But consider, Louis. You knew your memories would be altered before your return. This is before your return.”
    Fine print.
    Louis tamped down his rage, trying to think with his mind instead of his hormones.
    After the confusion that was his childhood, memory was a fixation. An obsession. Memory was the sole, gossamer link to all that had been taken from him. He clung to the bits he
did
remember. Throughout his adult life he had studied countless tricks and ploys, learning to learn.
    And so he recalled verbatim what Nessus had warned.
Things that you will see cannot be revealed. Your memories will be edited before I return you to Known Space.
    The imprecision of
before
was the least of Louis’s problems. Nothing in Nessus’ words limited memory editing to what Louis saw while on this trip! Louis could be returned to Known Space as a vegetable, and Nessus would have kept his bargain.
    And Louis had been too addled even to notice. Compared to that failure, the physical weakness from which he had been delivered paled to nothing.
    If he survived this adventure, Louis vowed, he would never take drugs again. He would think before he acted. He would be more deliberate in everything he did. If he survived—
    No.
    He would be more deliberate