“Stop being so damned oblique!” Veronica said.
“Jakrors,” Cog said, “live off ingested materials. The only thing that’s keeping the Star Fall from cosmic digestive juices are our force-fields—which are apparently being sapped at a faster rate than previously plotted.”
“Can’t we contact this thing, tell it to spit us out?” Veronica suggested desperately.
“Contact what?” Cog said. “This thing isn’t intelligent yet. That’s what it develops from parasitic attachment to intelligent energy-fields. A mind. We’ve got only about two hours before its energies break through our force-fields and we’re all broken down to our component enzymes and become cosmic protoplasm. If only I knew where the true central controls are ... this isn’t it, that much is for sure. If only I knew where Hurt’s brain is ... where Ort Eath’s orgabox is nestled. We might be able to do something then.”
“Charley!” Veronica said. “The schematic in your pocket! The thing that Todd told you about!”
Charley pulled out the folded paper, gave it to Cog, who opened it up. “Of course,” said the leg. “I should have known. The Core. They’re hooked up to the Core!”
* * *
“What is the meaning of life?” Todd asked dejectedly.
“Sorry, no cigar,” Ort Eath said. Even as he spoke, the Arachnid at the other end of the connecting cable was busy hauling something that glimmered gold into the room. It plopped the huge chalice onto the surface of the bar, then began dumping all matter of alcoholic beverages inside. Mist seeped up, glittering with rainbows. “Rather, you should ask me to spare your puny, insignificant lives. Or maybe you should inquire as to the manner in which I wish you to bow down before me.”
“Not likely!” Angharad said. Horn tilted down, she charged. Casually, Ort Eath raised a hand. A multicolored energy beam streamed out, catching the uni-donk and slamming her abruptly to the ground.
“Please do not attempt what you perceive as violence upon my person,” Ort Eath said. “You see, at long last I am coherent again, whole. My fragments are cemented together and I am fully in control again. It is my consciousness that is dominant now, after a year of struggle. In my mastery, I operate fully the ins and outs of the Fabrication. Observe, O sister!”
Suddenly Angharad metamorphosed into a giant bat. A soda machine with eyes and a mouth. Then, most surprisingly, she became herself again, her true self. Angharad blinked with vexation, then looked down with great surprise at her body.
“You as well, friend Merlin.”
A halo of brightness grew above the magician’s head. It widened to a hoop which slowly descended. As the lines passed over the wizened body, it transformed itself into the smoothness of youth ...
... became the image of the man Todd Spigot knew as Earnest Evers Hurt.
“What—” Hurt said. “What am I doing here? What’s going on?” Hurt gazed around, baffled. “I’ve been having the craziest dream. The Star Fall. Something about the Star Fall.”
“A puppet,” Angharad said, eyes bright with realization. “All along, Hurt was just your puppet, wasn’t he, Ort Eath?”
She turned to Hurt. “What is the last thing you remember, Mr. Hurt?”
“The Star Fall. The ship that I’d bought out ... a starliner. I’d started plans to change it. I was also hoping to accomplish some experiments in Underspace, utilizing the ship’s real-fic computer processes. Wait a moment. I was exploring the ship’s computer systems ... the Core ... That’s the last thing I remember clearly. The Core talked to me ... yes ... and then my own bodyguard, my biobot turned on me, came at me—
“And then, the strange dreams ...” Hurt blinked, a disoriented cast filming his eyes as he stared back into dim memory. “I was me, and I wasn’t me. Two places at once, doing things, thinking things ...” He gazed at Ort Eath, his eyes hardening. “I was used, then. Somehow my hopes, my dreams, my fears ... they were used.”
“I should have suspected this all along,” Angharad said, sitting down woefully on a stool. “Mr. Hurt ... I’m afraid that despite appearances, right now you’re being used as well. You’re just a brain, floating in a nutrient tank, connected with wires. Just like me.”
“I don’t understand at all,” Hurt said, looking around in wonder. “The Fabrication ... it’s been constructed? My God, if it were in the wrong hands.” A look of horror flitted over his features simultaneously with realization. “Oh God. What have I done?”
“You seem to be in a jolly, expansive mood, brother mine,” Angharad said sardonically. “Care to gift us with a thorough explanation?”
“Gladly,” came the familiar monotone. “Although do not expect the plottings of a brilliant mind, nor the ravings of a mad one. I have changed. My obsessions have subsided somewhat.”
“You did escape then, brain intact inside the orgabox,” Todd said.
“Hardly intact, Mr. Spigot. I was defeated and fractured. I lay jumbled in a mass of other identities, drowning there, unable to assert my will, owning no will. The orgabox sought refuge, as programmed. It burrowed into the Star Fall’s Core as prearranged by myself, allowing for what I considered highly improbable: my defeat. For a long time, I was dead; slowly mixing with the other brains and identities in the combine. And then, something woke me—an intruder in the Core! It woke us all, but it was I who struggled from the sea of unconsciousness, clutched for support, for a being to infest myself with, to possess.”
“Hurt’s biobot!” Angharad exclaimed. “You became the Arachnid!”
“Partially. I also seized Hurt. The Core had been fitted with the necessary surgical and storage equipment. I removed Mr. Hurt’s brain, effectively absorbing it into myself. Through it I programmed a cyborg analog mind into his body, which I monitored directly through my cortex link with Hurt, thus literally assuming his identity, contouring it to fit my own needs. This was an almost instinctive process, for I was still trapped in the Others, and inevitably dragged back into almost total unconsciousness. I was awake long enough, however, to program both the Arachnid and the pseudo-Hurt with a Prime Directive: free me! From time to time, I awoke sufficiently to concoct and implement plans. Confused, disjointed plans, certainly, but my plans. Plans which have come to fruition.”
“I don’t understand,” Todd said. “It was Hurt who wanted to tap into the Collective Unconscious, who wanted to live beyond his normal lifespan.”
“As I utilized Hurt’s mind as a connector to the cyborg mechanism, a feedback developed, mixing some of Hurt’s obsessions into my obsession. Hurt had already discovered something curious about Underspace. Hurt was frightened of death. In my incarnation as Hurt, his means merely became more ruthless; his ends ... broadened in scope, shall we say.
“But you must understand, I was not exactly I then. Only at certain times was I able to surface, alter programming. Hurt’s will and mine were curiously intertwined. Only slowly was I able to separate myself fully from the minds in the orgabox, using Hurt’s ego as a lever. Gradually I retreated into my own natural brain, pushed the intruders out.
“Until recently I was fragmented, disjointed. Transforming Hurt’s ideas and obsessions into reality played handily into my need for regrouping, for unity of Self—Individuation, if you will.”
“I only meant to experiment,” Hurt muttered. “It was to be part of my research program ...” Unable to slough off his guilt with words, Hurt cast his eyes downward.
“No, Hurt. You sought the prize that I will have. For the Star Fall has truly reached its destination. Soon I will have a new body.”
“You used the Fabrication to re-establish your identity?” Angharad asked.
“Exactly. And I know exactly what that identity wants,” Ort Eath said. “Power. Continuation. Rulership. More than I ever imagined! Once the Portal opens, I shall control the minds of the human race! Even now the means are being effected in the Star Fall. We work now, here, only with the met
aphorical, the symbolic, representing shifts and changes in the mechanisms that will line me through the Fabrication to this strange new creature. I will become the controlling consciousness of it, you ... and perhaps even the entire human race. Imagine! Whole planets—not just the Earth—that I can destroy at whim!”
“You wouldn’t!” Angharad said.
An uncharacteristic trace of humor in the monotone: “Of course not. I’ve reformed, as I mentioned. I don’t want to harm anyone. I just want to be in charge.” Its features contorted. “And just maybe I might use the position to wreak my vengeance upon the race that spurned me. My beloved Morapns.”
“Why did you bring us here?” Todd demanded. “What have you done with Amber?”
“Allow me to guess,” Angharad said. “At first, reflexively, your desire was to kill us. Then you changed your mind. You decided to use us. Just our presence fired up your hatred for us, which in turn gave your ego, your identity, something to grasp hold of. Your delight at our dilemma, your torturing of us, was one of the key things that allowed you to individuate. But what, may I ask, are we doing here now? And where is Amber?”
“Oh, wandering somewhere within the Fabrication, out of harm’s way, performing his function in the Quest formula,” replied Ort Eath.
“Oh my God,” Todd said. “I see. The Holy Grail we’ve been seeking ... It’s not so holy is it? It represents the coming together of your personality, your renewal as a separate entity, as well as the means by which your new individuality—meshed into the Fabrication—opens up the portal to the Collective Unconscious.”
“Something like that, yes,” Ort Eath said. “And you ask why you are here now? Need you really? Before, you witnessed my defeat, my betrayal and my agony. Now you shall witness a far greater victory than what I sought before. You will become me ... and thus I will have my revenge upon you all.”
The Arachnid dumped one final bottle of liquid into the chalice.
“Our final communion,” Ort Eath said. “Drinks on the house!”
* * *
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Veronica asked as they ran down the shadowed corridor. Ahead of them hopped Cog, who in his excitement occasionally lifted clear of the ground in bursts of tiny rocket fire.
“I have an eidetic memory,” Cog squeaked. “Having previous access to a detailed map of the Star Fall, I find no problem navigating its byways. The schematic supplied by Charley fills in the necessary blank and—”
They turned a corner, directly into a cul-de-sac.
Cog stopped in his tracks. Tiny limbs twitched, fretting.
“You were saying?” Charley said, adjusting the straps of his backpack.
“Ah ha! I should have taken that left back there,” Cog said, executing a flaming about-face. “Hurry! There’s no time to waste. Several things can happen in the next hour, and most of them are unthinkable.”
“What I’d like to know,” Charley said, breathing hard, keeping pace with the manic robot leg, “is why you let it go this far.”
“What? You think I’m a god or something?” Cog said. “I do my best, I assure you! I had no idea that it wasn’t truly Hurt behind this, but Ort Eath. It threw me entirely off, I assure you!” Cog found the turn, executed it, trailing puffs of smoke. “It all fits into place now! I understand.”
“Understand what?” Veronica said, annoyed.
“Part of what threw me off was the erratic nature of Hurt’s methods. Like groping in the dark. It was vaguely threatening, but mostly confusing. Now that I know Hurt really wasn’t Hurt, but a tool of a disjointed being struggling to re-form its mind and its identity ... Bad enough that should happen ... Bad enough that Ort Eath should plan to try to muck with the Human Energy-Fields ... But if he should get control of the Jakror ... Well, that would put some heavy tremors through the cosmic fabric!”
“It’s possible then?”
“Absolutely. And Ort Eath is bright enough to figure out exactly how to. I don’t like to contemplate the results ... I don’t think even Ort Eath realized what he’s playing around with. I’m not even aware of the full scope of possibilities.”
“How ’bout a guess. Motivation for the troops, you know,” Charley Haversham said.
“You’ve heard about Satan, haven’t you?” Cog said.
“Sure,” Veronica said. “Christian myth.”
“Well, if it’s a myth—myth would become reality, should Ort Eath mesh himself with that Jakror. Goodness knows what powers he would accumulate ... He’d cause a great deal of mischief, certainly.” Cog stopped, gazed about. Numerous antennae suddenly pricked up. “Hmm. Sensors indicate that our destination is just a little ways ahead.”
Veronica shuddered. “We’ll have to go through that crowd of passengers on the floor up there,” she said. “So watch where you step.”
Carefully, they picked their way through sprawled heads and limbs.
“You know,” Charley said, “I wonder if Ort Eath has safeguards, protection against possible trespassers.”
“Why would he?” Cog said. “He thinks I’m trapped. He probably thinks you’re wandering about. Lost and ...”
Veronica screamed.
“You know, Cog, you’re full of shit,” Charley said as he gazed in horror.
The unconscious passengers, Disbelief Suspenders stitched into their backs, were rising up, like the walking dead.
* * *
It started as a spark.
The spark became a flame, a flare, a fiery hole punched in the air. A glimpse of the very stuff of strangeness glimmered through.
“Not long,” Ort Eath said. “The focusing power of my mental energy grows even as I speak. I have harnessed, through the Fabrication, the latent psychic abilities of the elect of Earth. They have guided me here, and now, through the lens of my willpower, a hole burns straight into the heart of the creature. The creature that will be mine as well, soon.”
Ort Eath had forced them to drink from the chalice his Arachnid had prepared. Save for Todd, of course, who could not. The potion apparently served the purpose of numbing the party sufficiently for Ort Eath to utilize their latent psychic abilities.
Twinkles and dazzles of sun-heart resplendence twisted and curved through the kaleidoscope corridor that was being revealed by the widening hole. Fused star-stuff ganglia glittered like crushed jewelry; sparkled diamond-white, carbuncle-azure, shot through with the rich red of arterial blood.
Todd averted his gaze from the hypnotic scene represented; turned it toward where the Arachnid twiddled its limbs with delight, and Ort Eath stood surveying the coruscations that sprayed his body and face like an insane blend of Heaven and Hell.
“Beautiful, isn’t it, Mr. Spigot? I almost feel as if it’s been calling to me all my life, and I misinterpreted that call.”
Todd’s only weapons against the creature were words, and, feeling helpless, he slung them as they popped into his mind: “All that time, it wasn’t Hurt’s obsession that fueled this; it was your insanity. Why? Ort Eath, why do you persist? You know the difference between right and wrong ... surely by now you do. Angharad has told me your story. You’ve got bits of other personalities composing you now. Why continue?”
“Right? Wrong?” The light made his face appear almost human. “Relative things, surely. All my existence has been a battle—a fight with unnameable forces toward something intangible.” Something like poignancy crept into his voice. “My life has been a struggle toward knowing who I am, toward an identity. I have discovered that identity now, an identity I choose, an identity that is not layered on me, infused by culture or society. I am no longer Morapn or human; my destiny is much greater than that. My godhood beckons. I finally will become who I truly am, and my struggles, my agony, my doubt and despair, will cease.”
“You think you’re unique in these things, Ort Eath? You don’t think that other intellig
ent beings have despair about identity? It’s like Chinese handcuffs, Ort Eath. The more you struggle, the more trapped you are—but if you relax, turn inward and contemplate, you are released.”
“Nonsense words!” Ort Eath said.
“No, truly! This is what I’ve realized in the past few days of self-doubt. Becoming yourself is not clinging to what you think you want—be it possessions or a stranglehold on billions of lives. It’s letting go, being yourself. The struggle to be godlike is what makes one demonic, Ort Eath. There is nothing of the release and contentment you seek in control of this creature, whether it is the Human Collective Unconscious or not.”
“Only I can define what I wish to become! My will shall conquer, for it is all that I truly have!” Ort Eath said.
“That’s been my problem too,” Todd said. “The eye is meant to perceive other things, not itself. So it is with the I, which is the other cutting edge to the sword of consciousness. In striking out at fancied oppressions in nature, we are actually striking inward and wounding ourselves.”
Ort Eath laughed. “The constructed Philosophers of the Fabrication have surely curdled your reasoning abilities, Todd Spigot. Truly I should not wish revenge upon the retarded!”
“I have been a fool in many ways, but now it’s you that’s the fool. The more you reach out for control, the more you belittle your true Self.”
“Silence your ravings!” Ort Eath commanded, turning his attention back to the widening portal. “I must concentrate in order for the portal to transcend the symbolic and take material form that my physical self may enter it.”
Ah ha, thought Todd as he looked over the drugged eyes of his companions. A chink in the armor. He could be a gadfly, an annoyance.
“Once you’ve achieved your godhood, your power, your revenge, Ort Eath ... once you’ve absorbed as many souls into yourself as you care to, once you have more power than you’ve ever before dreamed of ... what then, Ort Eath? What then?”
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