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.He saw a man, tall and golden-skinned, growing the software cyst in a pool of Taylor's blood.He heard the screams as this man led Taylor from the holding area to the casket.Data became memory again.The man was himself, Azoth, clothed in flesh and blood.Flesh that could assimilate any form or colouring, so that no race could detect the outsider in their midst.Azoth witnessed the struggle dispassionately.Taylor had been strong for a human - no match for Azoth's own strength, but he had damaged the casket as he was thrust inside.Coolant vapour had reacted with the atmosphere in the cavern.An explosion tore into Azoth's body, he was motionless.His memory core, tingling with sudden life, filled in some blanks in Taylor unit B's knowledge.Azoth's systems had shut down, flesh interface, speech, sight and cognitive functions badly damaged.While his circuitry faltered, the casket had sealed itself, and the regenerative crystallography patterns had healed all damage done to the cavern.He had slept for almost a century and a half, but time was of no consequence.He had been functioning for billions of years.He remembered his creation in the fluid vats on Benelisa, and his initial purpose.Then he remembered his secondary programming, and the long voyage through the stars, thousands of contain-and-destroy programs implemented on worlds that were hundreds of galaxies apart.Then he remembered again reviving Tarr, the two of them finding themselves trapped underground.But the Cavern was programmed to insinuate itself on arrival into the geology of the planet, and to clear a way to the surface automatically.The original path having been obscured over the years, the cavern had responded to the doors' efforts to open by simply creating another.How he had floundered in darkness until this point, staring at the caskets, endlessly trying to decipher their significance.'A' units held the original DNA couplings with the program data, while the'B' units were allowed back into society to breed, under careful monitoring; to be fully effective, the program required a gestation period of some months, and it was vital that the program could be passed on genetically to new generations so the Beast could never return.Only at that point would Azoth fully activate the program and so begin the elimination process.The signal had never been given, and the fledgling program had been unable to sustain itself.It had become tainted with the primitive patterns of the human brain, dysfunctional.It would need to be restored.6.1Taylor.The Golden Man and Strange Portals [1963]Peter Taylor hated being locked up.He'd seen too many walls and not enough windows in his lifetime.He knew where he was, and the knowledge filled him with both relief and terror.It was weird, like having that Froggie feeling - what did they call it?Of having been somewhere before.Whatever, this was the cave.The cave it all came from.It hadn't been a dream, or madness: it existed.Every counsellor, every doctor, they'd told him he was insane for believing in it, they'd put him inside, time after time.Told him he was trying to 'justify a psychosis', whatever that meant.Well, when he got out of here he'd show them.He felt stronger than he had for years; he could perceive everything around him more keenly than at any other point in his life.In a way it was like being a kid again - everything bright and shiny, and new.It made him feel dizzy, but he liked the feeling.It distracted from the fear.For while he knew where he was, he didn't know who had put him here and he didn't know why.The last thing he remembered, he'd been listening to pencil-head Roley spouting his hot air and lulling him to sleep - he'd been so tired - and having weird dreams.He'd dreamed Watson of all people was telling him things.He couldn't remember most of them, but the old bugger had promised him he'd feel stronger when he woke up, and he had.But what good were strength and vindication at last when you were stuck here - in a place you'd almost managed to convince yourself didn't exist?A part of him wanted to believe he was finally round the twist, to give in, but no: he'd never let that soft-shandy side of him have its say.All his life, he'd been right.Hadn't he been right that the world was plotting against him?Hadn't they taken his family away? He'd killed, and he'd beaten, he'd done what was right - what he'd been told to do.Voices in his head.The coppers, the judge, they'd all just laughed.Oldest one in the book, they'd said.When Taylor had smashed his head against the dock, trying to make the voices start again, they'd still thought he was putting it on, couldn't bear to let him go to a nice cushy hospital instead of a cell.They'd wanted him bad.The devil had liked him bad, it had seemed, but then he'd got bored, had abandoned him.Wasn't much Taylor could do locked up and pumped full of drugs, was there? But whatever anyone said - and they all tried it, doctors, nurses, his wife - he'd been right [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]