"Then, how do you emerge here?" Shilohon asked. "Do you mean that once you were in this other . . . `inner' world, and suddenly you found you were Nixie, in this one? You had no idea how you came to be here. Is that what you're telling us?"
"Not quite," Nixie said. "It has to be through a coupler. You can only emerge through a coupler."
Hunt shook his head. "A coupler into visar?" he queried.
"No." Nixie looked at him as if it should have been obvious. "Into jevex!"
Hunt sat back, stunned. Danchekker's head jerked around abruptly to look at her again, like a bird's. Impossible thoughts came into Hunt's head. "Surely it can't have been jevex itself," he protested. "We're not talking about something like what's just happened with visar?"
Shilohin thought for a moment, then pronounced firmly, "No. visar's internal representation of reality is nothing like our own. It has evolved a different world model, utterly incompatible. As you just heard, it doesn't even share our perception of physical space. An entity like that could never reside in a human nervous system. If this place does indeed exist, which Nixie says she came from, then at least it will have basic geometric and spatial properties in common with what we ourselves recognize. In other words, it exists in space as we know it." She paused, as if hesitating to voice the implication. "But how anybody could actually travel from somewhere else via a neural coupler, I couldn't, just at this moment, even hazard a guess."
Before anyone could say more, Del Cullen appeared in the doorway of the room. He was looking worried. "She's not there," he said, directing his words at Hunt. Cullen had gone away to call Gina at the Geerbaine Best Western, since they had expected to hear from her by now on the latest with Baumer. "She didn't check in last night, and they haven't had any messages. Baumer hasn't been seen since yesterday, either. There's been lots of trouble outside. I don't like it."
Chapter Thirty-Four
Gina was sitting on a wall beside Baumer, eating a grinil sandwich and sipping a hot, sharp-tasting beverage that passed for coffee. Then she was lying on her back, staring up at a strange ceiling.
The transition was as abrupt and as disorientating as that. She had no awareness of anything that had happened in between, not even a sensation of time having passed. It was as if a piece had been cut out of a recording tape in her head and the ends spliced cleanly together again.
For what must have been several minutes, she lay regrouping her scattered thoughts and trying vainly to coax an ounce of a recollection from the gap in her impressions. But there was nothing. Her train of memory was like the trace of a recording clock that had lost power and then started again sometime later, after what could, for all the information she had to go on, have been a moment or a year.
She raised her head and saw that she was still dressed as she had been; she was lying on a couch and covered to the waist by a light blanket. The room was warm and clean, furnished simply with chairs, table, closet, and vanity, and embellished with a few strangely styled ornaments, and some pictures on the walls. It felt more like what could have been a spare room in any private house than a hospital. But there was a trace of an odor permeating the place, which suggested, if anything, a kind of incense. She could detect no sign of any injury, and concluded that she hadn't been in an accident. Therefore her amnesia had been induced deliberately; somebody didn't want her to know where she was or how she'd gotten there.
Which said she was probably a prisoner.
She tried moving and found there was no restraint. But when she got up and crossed the room to try the door, it was locked. She turned to look at the surroundings again, and noticed the standard Jevlenese companel by the couch, similar to the one she had seen in Baumer's office. "zorac, are you there?" she said aloud on impulse. "Can you hear me?" There was no response. "Channel fifty-six . . . Activate channel fiftysix . . ." Nothing. She went back to the couch and sat down to try and make something of the panel's manual controls, but without result. On reflection it seemed a pretty silly kind of hope, anyway.
Then, all at once, the utter isolation of her predicament came home to her. She felt her resolve slipping, and fear taking over despite herself. Suddenly she wanted to be back in Seattle again, among her own things, knowing that familiar places and scenes lay outside the walls. She picked up the blanket and pulled it around her shoulders, knowing that the room wasn't especially cool, but unable to feel warm. So much for curiosity and an interesting life. If she got back okay after this, she decided, from now on she'd join the local women's club and get all the excitement she needed from the soaps.
A prisoner, then, of whom? It could only be the Jevlenese organization, whatever it was, that Baumer was mixed up with. It was clear now that he had been acting under instructions from them when he called her. Whether he had known their exact intentions or purpose made little difference. She stared at the door and thought of the countless movie sequences she had seen, telling her what to do in this kind of situation: wait behind it for a guard to come in with a tray of food, surprise and overpower him, and then contrive an escape. Simple. Nothing could have seemed more ridiculous.
Then, as if triggered by her very thinking about it, the door opened. For a moment, Gina wondered if she was in a visar-created world for some reason. There would have been no way of telling the difference.
But the person who came in wasn't a guard with a tray. It was a woman in a loose green trouser-suit gathered at the ankles and secured in the middle by a wide belt. Her features were loose and fleshy, and her hair was streaked with gray and tied severely behind her head. With her was a shortish man in a straight-cut coat of gray trimmed with blue, whom Gina had no reason to know was Eubeleus's aide, Iduane.
They stood looking curiously at her for a few seconds. She stared back with what she hoped was a passable imitation of defiant indifference; inside, something in her chest was turning backflips.
"So, again you are with us," the woman said. Her manner was matter-of-fact, dispassionate. "A resetting of the short-term neural circuits. Nothing that you should worry about. You simply lose a few unimportant memories. Some people's take longer to reintegrate than others." The words were coming from her mouth. She was speaking her imperfect, accented English naturally, Gina realized.
"How—" Gina's throat had gone dry. She forced saliva into her mouth and tried again. "How long have I been here?"
"Not long. Under a day, a little."
Too passive, Gina told herself. She was starting to react submissively already. "You've no right to keep me for any time at all," she said, mustering some firmness and straightening up. "I demand—"
"Oh, please not to waste time with the theatrics," the woman said. "This is not the overlegislated USA. Rights are flexible on Jevlen. And in any case, it is we who decide what they are."
"And who, exactly, is `we'?"
"We are the ones who ask questions." The woman pulled over a chair and sat down facing Gina from the far side of the room. The man remained standing. Gina's impression was that he didn't speak English. The woman went on. "And the first thing we like to know is exactly who you are?"
"I'm a writer," Gina replied. "I write books. Is that okay with you?"
"And why do you come to Jevlen?"
Gina had read that the only safe strategy in an interrogation situation was to say absolutely nothing from the start, and stick to it. But somehow, now, the pressure of the reality made it impossible. She had to say something to ease her tension. "If it's any of your business, I'm researching a book on Jevlenese agents who were infiltrated to Earth throughout history."
"Yes, that is very interesting. But now tell us the real reasons."
Gina shook her head and tried to look bewildered. "What real reasons? That's it . . . I don't know any other reasons."
"Oh, come on. You think we are fools just because the Thuriens turn off our computer? You were sent to Baumer as spy. You pretended you agree with the things he believes, so you will get him to talk. And you think that we won't chec
k the books you write? You detest all the things he believes in."
Gina swallowed. "You're crazy. Who the hell would I be spying for?"
"Well, you work with group from UNSA, aren't you?"
"You mean the scientists?"
"Of course, the scientists."
"What of it? I'm an American, for God's sake. They're from the same planet: fellow beings. I like being around my own kind. Is there something funny about that?"
"Ah yes, all true . . . But what are they doing on Jevlen?" the woman asked. She raised a hand. "Before you speak, I save you from wasting both our times. This story they tell about coming to look at Ganymean science is just cover. We know that. They come because they are friends of Garuth and the Ganymeans who are put in charge of Jevlen. They come here to do something for them. What is it? And what part in it do they give to you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I came here independently."
"But you already talk to UNSA in Washington."
"For help on my book, sure. But there were complications. They turned me down."
"But was it not them who put you in the Vishnu? You come here for them, in disguise."
"Bullshit. I figured that if they weren't going to help, I'd get what I wanted in my own way. I made my own arrangements. I only got involved with the scientists after we left Earth. I'd met one of them before."
"So, what do they come here for?" the woman asked again. "Why do UNSA send them to Jevlen?"
"I've told you everything I know."
"I don't believe you. Why you lied to Baumer?"
"Look, I've had just about enough of this. I don't have to talk to you. Who the hell do you think you are to go around snatching people off the street? What business is it of yours why I do what I do?"
The man and the woman held a muttered exchange in Jevlenese. Although not understanding the words, the man seemed to have read the gist. The woman sighed and massaged her eyebrows. Gina began to feel more confident, telling herself that she wasn't doing so badly. And then the door opened. Gina looked up, and her mouth dropped open as she recognized the tall, yellow-haired figure with icy blue eyes, clad in a green robe with a maroon-lined hood thrown back on his shoulders. It was the Axis of Light's "Deliverer," Eubeleus.
"You've spent too many years on Earth among those Russians, Anna," he said to the woman, addressing her in Jevlenese but using her adopted Terran name. "The habits you acquired there are finding it hard to die. I warned you that you wouldn't get anywhere this way." He glanced at Gina. "But fortunately it's of little consequence. Bring her through."
The faint, self-congratulatory smile had frozen on Gina's face. At his tone, and the motion that he made with his head in the direction he had appeared from, a heavy weight seemed to drop in her stomach.
"So, you don't want to talk like good friends," the woman said, standing up from the chair. "That doesn't matter, because now we go to more effective ways." She read the apprehension on Gina's face and emitted a laugh. "Oh, you don't need any worry. Read too many books, maybe. Those things old-fashioned and not very nice. Today, all very painless. You remember nothing."
Eubeleus moved aside from the doorway, and Gina saw for the first time the two men waiting outside. The Jevlenese woman looked back at her. "Only question is, do you cooperate now and come with us, or do we have to make it undignified?"
Although Gina knew she was powerless to change anything, instincts took over. She shrank back against the end of the couch, gripping the edge and shaking her head mutely. The two attendants moved into the room. Iduane voiced a command to activate the coma-wave resonator trained on the couch from a recess in the ceiling . . . And that was the last that Gina knew of anything until several hours later.
She was unaware of being taken to another room where the neurocoupler was situated; of the soft contours of the recliner as she was laid down in it; or the discarnate, exploratory fingers stealing into her mind . . .
"She's a fraud, as was suspected," the machine's voice announced. Being the Axis's headquarters, the Temple in Shiban could always draw on the core part of jevex that had been left running. "Her meeting with Hunt aboard the Vishnu was contrived to make her subsequent liaison with the UNSA group seem more natural. Her initial approach to UNSA in Washington was as she described. Caldwell saw it as an opportunity to enlist her help for his own purposes, and Hunt put the proposition to her before she returned to Seattle."
"What was his purpose?" Eubeleus snapped. "How much was disclosed to her of that?"
"Garuth contacted Hunt direct, privately. The Marin woman happened to be present at the time. The Ganymean was unable to deal with the Jevlenese mentality, and knew that the rehabilitation program was failing. He went for help to those whom he had communicated with effectively in the past. Their mission was to investigate. The woman was to be available to ask questions that would seem inappropriate from scientists."
While he considered the statement, Eubeleus stared at Gina's unconscious form—indifferently, in the way he might have regarded a specimen on a laboratory dissection bench. "Why go to Hunt?" he asked. "Why not the proper political channels? Garuth had contacts in those areas, too."
"He didn't trust them. He was suspicious that maneuvers were afoot to terminate his administration of Jevlen, but he wanted to complete the task that he had accepted."
"What about Baumer? How did they get onto him?"
The machine replied. "He has been under suspicion for a while. The Terran, Cullen, knew that Baumer took the Obayin report."
"What!" Eubeleus exclaimed. "As far back as that? The fool didn't take sufficient precautions."
Iduane looked worried. "How much do they know about Uttan?"
"Only the official story," the machine said, reading further, "but they're suspicious."
"Have they connected Baumer to myself or the Axis?" Eubeleus asked.
"No. But discovering his connections is their main priority. Garuth has authorized zorac to scan its translation channel for possible leads."
Eubeleus raised his eyebrows. "They are determined. Well, that's something worth knowing." He inclined his head at Iduane: "Make sure that nobody uses that channel for anything sensitive."
"Of course."
Eubeleus turned away to stand with his hands clasped behind his back, facing the coupler's panel of control equipment and thinking rapidly. "We must move quickly," he murmured. "Contact Garuth and say that I want to see Calazar again. We need to keep as much pressure as possible on the Thuriens to get us to Uttan."
"What about Baumer?" Iduane asked.
Eubeleus shrugged contemptuously. "He was careless. His usefulness is over. Eliminate him."
Iduane nodded.
The Jevlenese woman indicated Gina with a wave of her hand. "And her?"
Eubeleus turned his head to stare at the motionless form again. A faint smile of amusement crossed his face. "We can make use of her," he said. "So, she wanted to play at being a spy, eh? Very well, we'll send her back. But not just with her recollections of being here erased. That would only make it obvious to them what had happened. Instead, we'll get jevex to implant a different memory sequence of our own devising. That way, I think we could turn her into quite an effective spy—for us. And she will be right inside the group that matters there. That should make her far more useful than Baumer ever was."
Chapter Thirty-Five
Walking quickly, Hunt led the way into the passage beyond the corner bar and through the doorway into the vestibule where the dark blue flowers wilted in their tub. Del Cullen followed close behind, with Lebansky and Koberg bringing up the rear. Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the hall. Ignoring the ever-to-be-fixed elevator, they made straight for the stairwell. They passed landings where discordant Jevlenese music blared behind closed doors and stale cooking odors hung in the air, and stopped finally at the purple door with the white surround on the third floor up.
"Murray, are you in there?" Hunt called, stabbing at the call plate w
ith a finger. "It's Vic Hunt."
Murray's voice replied a moment later. "Vic? Say, what gives? We weren't expecting you."
"This isn't social. It's urgent. Open up."
"Hey, look, I'm not sure I like that tone of voice, you know. It just so happens that right now—"
"Open the door, dammit, or we'll break it down!"
"I don't have to take that kind of shit. If you wanna bust your shoulder trying, that's okay by me. Get lost."
"Look, there's a carload of Shiban police around the corner downstairs. If you don't let us in, they'll come up and torch it down. You've got ten seconds."
The door began sliding aside. Hunt went in without waiting for it to open fully, and the other three followed him through into the lounge. Murray was sitting with two other men and several girls at the large table, which was decked with bottles and glasses and had been pulled out from its usual place by the wall. They seemed to be in the middle of a kind of gambling game that involved unfamiliar cards and tokens placed on a board. Murray lowered the hand he was holding and looked at the intruders with displeasure.
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