Four Lords of Diamond - Book 1 by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online

reeling a little bit from a slight bout of dizziness that soon passed, and looked down at my body. It was tremendously muscular, the body of a miner or some other sort of heavy laborer. There were a few scars on it that obviously had been treated by someone other than a meditech, and I recognized two of them as knife wounds.
    My entire body was almost covered in thick, coarse, black hair—more hair on my chest, arms, and legs than I'd ever seen on anything but an animal. I couldn't help noticing, though, that I was better endowed sexually than I had believed humanly possible. I just stood there, stunned, for I don't know how long.

I'm not me! my mind screamed at me. I'm one of them—one of the surrogates/>
    I sat back down on the cot, telling myself that it just wasn't possible. I knew who I was, remembered every bit, every detail, of my life and work.
    My shock gave way after a while to anger—anger and frustration. I was a copy, an imitation of somebody else entirely, somebody still alive and kicking and perhaps monitoring my every move, my every thought. I hated that other then, hated him with a pathological force that was beyond reason. He would sit there comfortable and safe, watching me work, watching me do it all—and when it was over, he'd go home for debriefing, return to that easy life, while
    I...
    They were going to dump me on a world of the Warden-Diamond, trap me like some kind of master criminal, imprisoned there for the rest of my life—of this body's life, anyway. And then? When my job was done? I'd said it myself upon awakening, passed my own sentence. The things I knew! I would be monitored at all times, of course. Monitored and killed if I blew any of those secrets. Killed anyway at the completion of the mission just for insurance.
    My training came into automatic play at that point, overriding the shock and. anger. I regained control and considered everything I knew.
    Monitor? Sure—more than ever. I recalled Krega saying that there was some sort of organic linkup. Are you enjoying this, you son of a bitch? Are you getting pleasure from vicariously experiencing my reaction?
    My training clicked on again, dampening me down. It didn't matter, I told myself. First of all, I knew just what he must be thinking—and that was an advantage. He, of all people, would know that I would be a damned tough son of a bitch to kill.
    It was a shock to discover that you were not who you thought you were but some artificial creation. It was a shock, too, to realize that the old life, the life you remembered even if you personally didn't experience it, was gone forever. No more civilized worlds, no more casinos and beautiful women and all the money you could spend. And yet as I sat there, I adjusted. That was what they picked men like me for from the start: we had the ability to adjust and adapt to almost anything.
    Although this was not my body, I was still me. Memory and thought and personality made up an individual, not his body. This was no more than a biological disguise, I told myself, of a particularly sophisticated sort. As to who was really me—-it seemed to me that this personality, these memories, were no more that other fellow's than my own. Until I got up from that chair back in the Security Clinic I had really been somebody else anyway. A lot of me, my memories and training, had been missing. That old between-missions me was the artificial me, the created me, I thought. He, that nonentity playboy that currently did not exist, was the artificial personality. The real me was bottled up and stored in their psy-chosurgical computers and only allowed to come out when they needed it—and for good reason. Unleashed, I was as much a danger to the power structure as to whomever they set me against.
    And I was good. The best, Krega had called me. That's why I was here now, in this body, in this cell, on this ship. And I wouldn't be wiped and I wouldn't be killed if I could help it. That other me, sitting there