There was another glower, but they went, the two “androids” following intently behind, ready to do their master’s bidding.
Ari wasn’t impressed. He was scared to death. “I told you we couldn’t get away with this! You should have let surrogates handle it like always!”
“Like you? Stop your knees from knocking, boy. They’re telegraphing nonsense to your brain. There was no way I could permit third parties to get hold of the Pleiades. No way. No, son. Take heart from that old bastard Kincaid. If he could escape us and Hadun’s boys, get them to take him where he wanted to go, then get out and call for reinforcements in the middle of a planet of enemy psychopaths, then this isn’t any big deal. They’ve tipped their hand, nephew. They blew this one. Right now they created their own stalemate, just to get a couple of guys inside to size up the situation. They saw little, and had to bluster. Now we have to examine our possibilities.”
“But—you know they’re going to find out what you did to the two girls, and you know the penalty for that. They’ll have us taking their places! They’ll turn us into slaves for some other rich old fart, but unlike them, we’ll know!”
Jules Wallinchky grinned. “Son, this old fart’s not nearly there yet.” He turned to the console, not having either of the women with him. “Identity of the man in the robe and mask?”
“Unknown. I have no data on which to identify him.”
“Does anything correlate with anyone in your memory?”
“There are no perfect or close approximations that I can find,” Core informed him. “The mask and robe are lined to prevent the usual scans from getting precise information. I have no fewer than six different heights, the range being as great as 7.6 centimeters. Weight is 102.05 kilograms, but how much of this is in the cloak and mask cannot be determined, either.”
“Can you determine anything about him?” Ari asked it.
“He is male, he is trusted by the Inspector, and he has had serious medical treatment recently. He is old, but in excellent physical condition, barring the recent injury, which appears to have involved replacement skin. He also has earlier replacements, including some to skeletal structure. He is not a telepath but does appear to have some abilities in the paranormal bands, if weak. He was not particularly worried or angry at the exchange here. General circumstantial evidence suggests he is a spacer by profession, either military or civilian. There is nothing more I can give you on him.”
“Could he be Kincaid?” Wallinchky asked.
“He could be Kincaid. Or he could be several million other Terran men past middle ages or into rejuves,” the computer responded pragmatically.
“Why didn’t you have one of the girls lift off that mask or just hold ’em both?” Ari asked his uncle. “We couldn’t be in any worse shape than we are now.”
Jules Wallinchky gave his nephew a slight smile. “And that question is why this O’Leary is a nervy but smart detective and you would not be first in line as an heir,” he responded. “As he said, you don’t come in like this, and announced, without backup. Enough backup to blow us and the whole complex to hell if need be. The thing that keeps them from doing that is being able to see and remain in communication with the Inspector. So long as he’s here, they won’t come in because we have no escape, apparently, so why not be patient and reclaim the artwork as well? And he knew I understood that, which is why I couldn’t touch him. He knew I could never allow such beauty, such genius, to be blown to bits. No, we’ve bought time. Ah! Here are the girls, back from escort duty! Alpha, Beta, you may go and remove that mock android costume and makeup and then return here. We’ve suitably confused them, but from this point it’s moot.”
They turned and left, leaving Ari, sweating in spite of the perfect climate control, staring out into nothingness.
“Cheer up, nephew!” Jules Wallinchky said. “You miss the point! I very much hope that this is Kincaid. In fact, I’m going to base my future plans on it.”
Ari halfway came back to reality from imagining being under the brain scrambler at a Criminal Treatment Center. “Huh?”
“Kincaid has lived only to destroy Josich. Josich wasn’t among the bodies, but he and some close family members cum bodyguards vanished. Where did they go? How? And why?”
“I dunno. Vaporized? It looked like they activated some defense grid from ancient times. I never even believed that these places still had anything working on them. Incredible. But they’re dead.”
“Ancient,” Wallinchky repeated, chuckling. “A billion years or more… Humanity wasn’t even a mathematical possibility back on Old Earth, there might not even have been dinosaurs—I’m not too clear, but it’s that far back. Volcanoes and dark seas and chemical muck that might one day become life. They were already colonizing the stars back then. Had colonized, probably. Had cities and a vast interstellar civilization. They’ve been everywhere we’ve ever looked. Imagine that, Ari—a billion years or more! And their greatest machine still works!
“No spaceships, no spaceports, no art or sculpture or furniture. Just some very ugly, basic structures, to our eyes, and a layout that’s lasted because some of their old worlds are devoid of anything that might wear them down. There are probably others now, so cratered or eroded there’s no sign. Like gods of ancient Greece and Rome—just think of your creation and there it is. Energy, some sort of limitless energy source we haven’t found, converted to whatever they desired. But not by magic, nephew. By a science so advanced it just looks like magic to us. And the damned super computer that did it still works!”
“So? What good does that do us?” Ari asked, wondering if his uncle was finally cracking under the strain.
The big man snapped his fingers and had another cigar placed in his mouth and lit. He settled back in his chair, looking oddly younger, somehow, than he usually did.
“If their world’s computer was still turned on, want to bet that the one that’s under our feet now isn’t still on, too? I’ve thought so for years. Alpha, what are the odds that the great machine of the Ancient Ones that’s in the center of this world is still alive?”
“One hundred percent, Master. We can feel it and sense it doing things quite often.”
Ari was suddenly doubly unnerved. “You mean it’s still alive?”
“Not as you think of it, sir,” Beta responded. “It is artificial in nature, but the tissue that fills the planet was grown, not manufactured. Researchers have theorized that it performs much like a monster organic brain, one with near infinite capacity.”
“You mean it’s alive?”
“In the broadest definitions of that word, sir, yes.”
Jules Wallinchky blew a huge cloud of smoke and said, “Don’t be such a yellow dog, nephew! It’s a grander scale of the road we’re traveling now! The computer that runs this place is a hell of a lot smaller, but it’s still huge, its capacity is enormous, it is self-aware and it makes decisions, and it is self-repairing and self-expanding. It also feeds us and gives us breathable air and all the rest by basic energy to matter and matter to energy conversions. I can’t wave my hand and say ‘Let there be light’ and then direct where the moons and planets might go, but I can already order up an excellent filet mignon you can’t tell from the finest cuts of real meat, and both you and I have had the real thing. Look at what it did with these two! One day we’ll have the same sort of thing the Ancient Ones had. It probably will be done differently, and who knows what we’ll do with it or how we’ll handle it or whether we’ll get that kind of power too early and use it to wipe ourselves off the galactic map, but it’s coming. That’s not for us to see, though, nephew. But that shot of the attack on Josich was a real eye-opener.”
“What do you mean?”
“How’d those gods get from world to world? If you were a god, you wouldn’t want to have to travel on a ship like we do. You’d want to simply wish yourself where you needed to go and then go there, your brain instantly reconnected to the local computer so you remained a god. Now, Josich h
ad that doohickey gadget we stole as some kind of interface to the Ancient Ones’ local god machine. It was on and working when they attacked. Odds were, they hadn’t done much with it, but now there’s an attack while everything’s boosted. Now everything’s getting blown to Hell. Josich is running for his life in panic, since there was no escape running that way. Suddenly the machine snaps on, there’s this disappearance, then a beam is shot into nothingness. I think the big machine got the message. Probably not in words, probably in sheer panic. Something like, ‘Get me outta here!’ The sheer emotion of that is picked up and understood. The thing, well, gets him outta there.”
Ari turned and looked again at his uncle. “To where? Where would it send him? To another world like this, with no ship and no supplies, so eventually supplies run out? Or—something else?”
“I have no idea,” Jules Wallinchky responded. “But, considering we’re in an almost velvet-lined version of Josich’s state, I’m game to find out.”
“What?”
“There have always been a lot of mysteries in space, nephew. Ships found in perfect condition but with no captain or passengers. Colonies where people simply vanish even though there’s no place to go. Lots of legends, stories, some true. If I can’t keep all this, son, I’ll give it back to posterity and take a chance at a new start. I haven’t had a real adventure, a real challenge, in a very long time. I’ve been so bored I just had to go on this job, and I’m paying for it. Maybe it’s a good thing, though. I felt better, younger, more alive than I have since I was clawing my way up.”
“You—You have another of those things?”
Wallinchky grinned. “I have the original. Hell, if Josich got the duplicate we had built from specs to work, then the original should do the job even easier!”
“How do you know they aren’t vaporized? Or integrated into that—that thing in the same way these two are integrated with your computer here? Or are now dead, out of power and water and food on some godforsaken ancient ruin? All those are as probable as this, particularly my first idea.”
“My gut says they’re not,” Wallinchky replied. “And I don’t think our guests from the Realm think so, either, or they wouldn’t have bothered to come down here in person. O’Leary’s smart. He’s already got the analysis of the machine they recovered from Josich’s operation, probably in pieces, and discovered it isn’t the same materials. That’s what they’re after, nephew. They blew the other one up. Now they want their original gadget back.”
“Then all this is from an analysis of you? They already figured out that you’d haul it out and try and use it?”
“Why do you think they showed us that recording? Of course they know. And they also know that, like some of the most precious loot in the collection, they couldn’t get it by force.”
“Even if you use it, though, you’d have to go to the city. That would put you out in the open in an e-suit and easy to pick off,” Ari noted.
“Not me, nephew. Us. All four of us. Then they’ll be stuck with a few people here who haven’t any power over the computer or takeoffs, landings, defense, you name it, and they’d be dealing strictly with the true master of this place. It probably will cause them a monstrous problem. And, if that other one is Kincaid, I suspect we’ll have company. Remember, he wants to go where Josich went, no matter where it is. And O’Leary wants his gizmo back intact. They’re not going to hit us, nephew. They don’t give a damn if I get the thing working or not. If I go, they’re free of having to deal with me, my organization, my resources, all of it. If I don’t, well, I’m going to have to do the other thing.”
“The other thing?”
“Download myself into the computer core here and probably merge with it. There’s no other way. Either way it goes, this could be very, very interesting.”
Ari was frightened. “I’m not going to do it, Uncle! I’m not ready for that!”
“Son, you got no choice at all,” Jules Wallinchky told him. “You can do it as a volunteer, you can do it like those two girls, or you can die. You got no future anyway. You know too much, and no matter what I do to your head, the Realm’s got stuff that can recover some of it. No, nephew. You come with me or the girls take you down to the med-lab.” He sighed. “But not right now. I’m starved and I could really use a good dinner, the best wine, all the best stuff. We’ll get the computer working on the problem now. Will you join me?”
Ari Martinez sighed, but nodded slowly. He was wondering what the odds were of knocking off his dear old mother’s brother and getting away with it.
The City of the Ancient Ones, Grabant 4
The great machine of the Ancient Ones knew that something was up. It was clear to both Core and the two women that there was a lot more activity below them and on the surface, much of it concentrating on the ancient city. They could feel the lines of force, feel the energy in intelligently directed patterns flowing on or near the surface. As before, it was not something they could understand or connect with, but the fact that what had been a rare occurrence was now almost common spoke volumes.
It knew!
Core knew it needed to pursue its own agenda, yet it could not violate its own central programming, which placed Jules Wallinchky’s interests paramount. It couldn’t quarrel with its master’s series of probable outcomes, but it did have a different set of hopes. If what had happened to Josich Hadun happened here, Core would much prefer that it conclude as a merger with the Ancient Ones’ great machine. Still, it had to prepare for any eventuality, and that meant, if need be, preparing the two women for the eventuality of severing contact with Core. Wallinchky wanted them programmed so they would protect him and obey his commands no matter what happened to any of them. Core wanted an imperative to contact it if at all possible.
The best that could be done would be to implant in them a drive to interface with whatever was out there. Core also wanted more of the human touch, or at least experience from that prior existence, so they would be self-sufficient if need be. It would be tricky, but it was possible.
Even a supreme computer couldn’t think of everything, but it would try.
The Kharkovs had been unwilling to come, and in fact stated that they would be delighted to become curators of the collection and at least ensure that it was not harmed by whoever got it, which was not what Wallinchky wanted, but was enough to satisfy his primary concerns. He knew that the Kharkovs would be only superficially analyzed by the Realm, and the cover story that they’d been engaged for restoration work, and only after being stuck here, with only one of them allowed to go offworld at a time after that, would be enough to absolve them of culpability.
“All right, so where is this gadget?” Ari asked over the suit intercom. The environment suit had come a long way from primitive spacesuits of the past; it was lightweight, fitted itself to the wearer, and had a small matter/energy/ matter converter that could supply basic sustenance and air and power to the suit almost indefinitely. There was no way around the need to be completely covered, of course, and while the helmet bubble was small and unobtrusive, it was certainly there, magnifying sounds and also making everything seem somewhat unnatural.
Ari hated the suits. If you got an itch, it was almost impossible to satisfactorily scratch it without risking breaking the seals.
“The girls are bringing the gadget, as you call it,” Wallinchky responded. “See? There!”
Ari turned and saw two figures emerge from the surface level airlock carrying what looked to be an enormous circular box. It might have been the largest trampoline in the Realm, but he knew it wasn’t. The two small, frail-looking women were handling the thing as if it weighed next to nothing; in fact, even outside the artificial standard gravity of the compound, they and everything else still weighed about seventy-five percent of normal, so if that thing was as heavy in normal gravity as it looked, well, they might well be hefting something close to half a ton.
“Is it that light, or are they really that strong?” he asked his uncle.
“A bit of both, actually. It is lighter than it looks, but I wouldn’t want to be one of those carrying it.”
Ari looked around. “I feel so damned exposed out here. What if Genghis Whatever and his buddy decide to just come on out and pop us cold?”
“They may come out—indeed, I suspect at least one of them will—but they won’t ‘pop us cold,’ as you so colorfully put it. They don’t want to damage this thing, and, besides, they’re within easy range of the main computer’s defensive ring. We’ll know when, and if, they emerge. Ah! Here we all are together! Come, nephew! It’s a good walk yet to the ruins!” Jules Wallinchky gazed at the barren, dark landscape, the twisted spires, the yellow, brown, crimson, and orange rock formations, and the almost black sky with its many stars. “Beautiful day for a walk, if I do say so myself!”
The landscape was indeed bleak, but they walked along what seemed almost a road. It wasn’t much of one, but it was wide and unnaturally smooth, and sunk into the bedrock about fifteen centimeters at the start and went deeper as they approached the city on the horizon.
“What did you build this thing for?” An asked his uncle.
“I didn’t build it, nephew. It’s part and parcel of that city up there. It’s one of many. There’s a lot that’s fascinating about this place. Now and then you’ll see the remnants of a crater, before we sink too deep to see a lot of the surface detail. The craters are all younger than the road, but the road has no crater marks. Almost like… well, like it’s maintained for use.”
“Creepy,” Ari commented.
“It’s like a lot of things they left. Ever been in one of these ruins before?”
“When I was a kid, for a short time, yeah. Not since. I barely remember it.”
“Well, it’s kind of like a template more than the ruins of a great civilization. We have a nice roadbed here, but no surface, no signs or adornments, no clue as to who or what moved along it. Why have roads if you can teleport, as almost everybody thinks they could? In fact, why even have basic city outlines if you can be creative and imagine yourself in a palace? Two things are sure: they didn’t think like us, and they weren’t much like us physically, either. Also, they were sure nutty over the number six. Six six six. The biblical number of the Beast, my boy. The demigods who fell from Heaven.”
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