There was hesitation on her part, but there was also still a connection, albeit not as strong and direct as she would have liked, to Alpha, and Alpha basically was telling them to do it. There was also the unalterable logic of what the thing was saying. Pragmatically, there wasn’t anything else to do.
They stripped themselves down completely and threw it all over the rail, then carefully they stripped Jules Wallinchky as well. Ari didn’t lose any of his attitude and feeling for the old S.O.B. under this condition, but he tried to suppress such thoughts, knowing she might take offense and punish him. With the kind of control she had over his mind and emotions, he could become Gamma in seconds if she had a mind to do it.
The old boy was flabby, and parts of his body were almost covered with scars of one kind or another. None of those should have been there; clearly he’d been through something since the rejuve that he hadn’t talked much about, which contributed to his current situation.
What was the old adage? The wages of sin is death! When you could be the most self-indulgent person in the galaxy and lived in a time when everything you could need, even medical aid, was always there, you tended to get a bit sloppy…
“We will transport the one who is dying,” the chief butterfly told them. “You two will proceed along the walk in the direction your friends went and we shall be covering you.”
“We cannot!” Beta insisted. “Our sole purpose is to serve our Master. We cannot abandon him.”
“I weary of this,” the creature responded, sounding disgusted. “Both of you start walking now or I am going to kill you.”
“For God’s sake! Do it!” Ari screamed at her. “How can you serve him if you die for nothing?”
That logic already had occurred to the woman, who turned and stepped onto the next section, and he found himself following and slapping the control to activate the walkway. One of the creatures followed, rifle pointed at their backs. There was no question that it would use it, and no doubt that the two of them together could not move faster than it could fire.
It was decided that Ari might try and reason with it, either to gain an advantage or simply to gain information. These things looked pretty in a bizarre sort of way, but not like the kind of folks you’d sit down with in other circumstances and buy each other beers.
“What race are you?” he began, trying to get a frame of reference.
“I am of the Yaxa.”
Well, that was a start.
“Did your people come here like us?”
“We are native here. All races are native here, but I was born here.”
“I am called Ari Martinez. Do you have a name?”
“Yes,” was the cold reply.
Ooooo-kay… “You say all races are native here. What do you mean? Have you seen our sort before? I mean, native on wherever this is?”
“Your people originated here. Some are here, yes, but they are a bloodthirsty and unpleasant lot and we have little or nothing to do with them.”
“Then—why are you bothering with us now? Are we being marched to a firing squad?”
“No. This is the ambassadorial region as well as Well World ingress and egress. All civilized races take their management turns here, and we are on this watch.”
“Ambassadorial region you say. But that means even enemies talk here without shooting. So why the guns?”
“Outsiders are already causing a great deal of suffering and hardship on the world. Until that is resolved, all outsiders are suspect. You do not have an embassy here.”
There was the whoosh of great wings to their left, over the vast chamber, and they both turned and saw the other two Yaxa flying, pushing an apparently levitating but still comatose Jules Wallinchky in front of them. They were making good speed and going off at an angle, although it was clear that both he and Beta would catch up with them in a few minutes.
So outsiders were making trouble. That certainly brought up a nasty thought, considering that the only outsiders likely to have been teleported here of late were certain water-breathing monsters. “Those outsiders now causing hardship and suffering—one of them is not by any chance named Josich, is it?”
“The one of that name is involved, yes. You know that one?”
“I only know of him, but his reputation where we come from is just as ugly as he seems to have wasted no time in reestablishing here. He is no friend of ours, and the large man who seems half machine who went with the rest of our party to find help has devoted his life to finding and killing Josich. He’s on your side.”
There was a pause, and then the Yaxa asked, ominously, “Why do you assume that we are against the powers this Josich has joined?”
Uh-oh. “Because you used the words ‘suffering’ and ‘hardship.’ I would have expected a different slant if you were on his side.”
“You make assumptions that other races think like you. It is a mark of the arrogance that seems always in your race.”
“Then the Yaxa are with Josich’s forces?”
“I did not say that, either. I merely told you to refrain from assumptions. None of this will likely make any difference to any of you. Josich is a very rare exception in making any impact at all, let alone a large one. I have no doubt we are about to hear the last of your group, although if the one who lives to kill is as determined as you say, he may be the exception. Or not. You will not find your spaceships and spacesuits here.”
After a half hour, maybe longer, they reached a section where corridors branched off and away from the walkway. They were internally lit so that they essentially glowed, but were clearly hewn out of whatever this place was made of, and they had that same odd shape as the doorways of the Ancient Ones’ city. There were some symbols embedded in the floor and where each corridor started and at each intersection, but they were of a sort impossible to divine. Beta assumed them to be numbers, since that would be the most likely common element in a place with a variety of races. Numbers could be agreed upon and then used in conjunction with maps and directories in local languages.
Although basically a helpless onlooker, the link to Beta’s brain did bring with it some respect as well as discomfort to Ari. He realized she was using all of it, and at a speed faster than he could imagine. He seemed to remember from school that the human brain’s speed and capacity was established early on, and maintained by constant stimulation and the building of dense clusters of neurons. Had they somehow been able to build densities that simply wouldn’t happen in nature? And had the constant linkage to that supercomputer in the house provided constant stimulation even when they were doing nothing at all? Her own speculation and deductions concerning this place, just based on what she could see and hear and what they were being told, was filling in quickly and building a very complex picture that he would never have accomplished on his own.
If that was the case, whatever else his sadistic uncle had done to Angel and Ming, they were both among the greatest geniuses the human race had ever produced. Even more, that concept of the Oneness while keeping an identity was becoming clearer. If she needed it, and they were in this kind of proximity, she could use the unused areas of his brain to augment hers! Temporary storage. The telepathic link was probably agonizingly slow to her, but think of the possibilities…
The Yaxa stopped the belt. “Go ahead of me, single file, down this corridor,” it instructed, and they did so, Beta leading, he following.
The route was complex, the kind of back and forth and up and left and down and right that would have confused Theseus in the Maze, but Ari knew that Beta could retrace it in a moment. It had been, perhaps, another fifteen minutes and several hundred of those symbols, but she was already reading them as if they were her native system. Base six, of course. The numbers were suddenly obvious, but the symbols accompanying them were still just squiggles to him; there was nothing to match them to.
Ari felt a strange sensation that grew stronger as they walked along. He was beginning to sense Alpha as well, her thoughts and her con
nections. They could function as one or as three, or any combination of that, and they all had access to whatever the other knew or was thinking. They were still too damned fast for him to fully follow, but he was getting the idea.
Don’t make the turns until the Yaxa says the instruction, Ari cautioned mentally. You almost risked giving this away. We need every edge we can get here.
The contribution surprised her, but she adjusted just in time. They were geniuses and devoted slaves and half computer, but they just didn’t think sneaky.
Now they passed some very large chambers that they walked right past. These seemed to be offices, some larger than others, inhabited by the damnedest assortment of bizarre creatures he’d ever seen. He was used to alien races, of course, but some of these were more bizarre than anything he could imagine, while others were eerily familiar. Centaurs and Minotaurs, and tall creatures with great white wings, and tiny self-illuminated creations. Bipedal reptiles wearing opera capes, creatures that looked like giant bowling pins with big round eyes, giant hairy spiders writing in ledgers… It was amazing.
Each of the chambers had a number on it, no two numbers alike. So the numbers on the corridor indicated creatures; the symbols were either corridor names or referred to the type of creatures who might collectively be along it— hairy oxygen-breathing mammals, maybe. They didn’t see enough to have a definitive sample, but Beta registered every number that had a race attached and by now had enough to draw some conclusions. Okay, so type, then number-number. That was the key. The numbers ran serially but in base six.
Some chambers were deserted, and apparently had been for a very long time. They looked something like the inside of the houses of the Ancient Ones, and gave no clues other than a lonely number without anything to attach itself to.
“How many races are there?” he asked the Yaxa.
“There are 1,560 races in the world,” it told him. “As this is the South Zone, only those carbon-based life-forms who have a toleration zone compatibility are here. That is exactly half. Races one to 785 are in the south. Races 786 to 1,560 in the north. We are almost there. Soon all will be explained to you. No more talking, please.”
Fifteen hundred sixty races on one planet? How big was this place?
The mother of races. The Well World, the Yaxa had called it.
They soon walked into the Yaxan embassy, where the rest of the party, plus one surprise, were already waiting, all as stripped to nothing as they had been.
Ghengis O’Leary, at least, was as tall as the average Yaxa, and much bulkier. He also was as huge in the areas otherwise hidden.
Where is the Master? Beta queried Alpha.
They will only say that he is being treated. Impossible to verify. We need more data to act, however. I am absolutely certain that the Yaxan statement that they would kill us without a second thought is correct, so resistance is profitless at this point.
Well, that was a relief, Ari thought.
The Yaxan Marines were there, all right, and they were at the ready. They probably all looked very different to one another, but to anybody there in the chamber, they looked absolutely identical.
Ari looked around. “How did it miss grabbing the Kharkovs?”
“I think it provides an exit to those who require an exit,” Jeremiah Kincaid responded. “They didn’t need an exit.”
“I didn’t need an exit!” Tann Nakitt snapped. “I was ready to go home!”
“You weren’t going home with all that spy data locked in your head, Nakitt,” O’Leary told him. “That’s why your ship didn’t come. Somehow it knew this, even if you yourself didn’t. Maybe from my mind, or Kincaid’s. I’m surprised to be here, too, for all that. Maybe I wanted Josich, or at least closure, more than I realized.”
“You look a little odd, Martinez,” Kincaid noted. “Are you all right?”
“Um, yes, sure. I’m just cold, that’s all.”
“I can understand that. What about Wallinchky? He still alive?”
“When they took him away he was, or at least I think he was. After that, couldn’t say. We had rifles up our asses.”
“Well, you made the right decision to come here and not fight them for him,” Kincaid assured them. “The Yaxa are all females, all born warriors, and they’re quick, smart, and with something of a hive discipline. You better believe they would pull the trigger.”
Ari sighed. “Yeah.” He sat on the floor with the others, finding it no more comfortable. “So how long do we wait?”
“I suspect that’s up to our hosts,” Kincaid said. “At least we’ve been able to determine that the first batch, including Josich, came through here.”
“We were told that he’s still up to his old tricks, even here, only maybe not in charge of the mess,” Ari told him.
“He’s not one to like being the power behind the throne, but he’s had to start off new here. It’s a sad commentary that he’s already been able to cause real problems.”
“Your megalomaniac Emperor has caused some serious problems just in a month or so,” said a voice behind them. “It is not, however, war, not yet.”
They all turned and saw, standing in the entrance, a most bizarre creature. He appeared to be made out of balls; at least that was the first impression. Humanoid in shape, perhaps a meter and a half tall but fairly wide, its feet were thick rounded pads, and its legs, arms, and indeed its whole body seemed to be composed of a series of thick rings or pads that gave the impression of a mass built of bubbles or balloons. The hands were huge ovals, like mitts, but were segmented to form fingers, any of which apparently could be shifted to opposing the others. Its head was a true ball, with round eyes and pupils of deep purple. The bottom of the ball had a straight slit, and this formed the mouth, which actually was hinged only at the back of the head. It looked unreal, like some kind of puppet or robot character done for an industrial exhibition.
“I am Ambassador Doroch,” it told them, the precise and slightly amused voice not quite matching the jaw movements, nor in fact seeming the kind of voice such a creature might have. “If you will all accompany me to a briefing room, I believe I can explain the situation here, and I should like to get some information from you as well. I have some water and some fruit there that should be compatible with all of your digestive systems.” The round eyes looked at Kincaid. “Those of you who have digestive systems,” he added. “However, it is essential that we process you through as quickly as possible here. The system is designed for that. Please—come. I’ll answer what questions I can. I hope I have your word to try nothing foolish, since there is nowhere you can run anyway. I abhor having guns in here.”
He led them into a larger room, lit by some kind of built-in radiation in the very makeup of the walls and ceiling but providing full spectrum lighting. Some basic conventional chairs were set up, clearly for them, as neither the Yaxa— who, thankfully, hadn’t followed or interfered—nor this creature could use them.
On the far wall was a map unlike any they’d ever seen. It was a physical/political map showing great seas and high mountains, continents and islands, all the usual landforms. But superimposed over it was a hexagonal grid that varied only at the top and bottom, where thick, dark lines were drawn, and where the political straight lines still had six sides but were flattened into two halves rather than hexagonal. Ari and the two women examined it with more knowledge than their hosts suspected. Numbers one through 785. The reason for the different shapes north and south were obvious even to Ari; you couldn’t cover a sphere with hexagons. The difference would be the polar regions, and it was probable that they were in the south polar region now.
Ambassador Doroch took his place in front of the map. “This is the southern hemisphere of our world,” he told them. “The world itself is roughly forty thousand kilometers around at the equator or pole to pole. It is a perfect sphere, which should give you the clue that it is artificial. We believe from the evidence of those like yourselves who get here via the old gates that it ma
y be the only remaining intact world of those you call the Ancient Ones. There are a lot of different terms for them; the term you just heard is how my own people’s name for them would be understood by you. As you might have guessed, none of us here are speaking your language. You are hearing us because we have implanted crystalline devices that serve as universal translators. They are organic, grown, and in very limited supply, so most people here do not have one and will never have one. This is important for you to know before you enter the Well World properly.”
“That is the second time I have heard that term used,” Ari commented. “Why is it called that?”
“Beneath us, perhaps a hundred kilometers or so, is a vast organic computer of a type no one has as yet duplicated. You probably have been on deserted worlds that might have similar cores, but this is the master computer, if we can still call it that, to which all others are linked. There are two levels—a very thin layer that governs this world, and the rest, which appears to govern all the remote units. The Ancient Ones built this world as a laboratory. Here they created independent ecosystems, each maintained by its own programs, and developed races that were evolutionarily consistent with the ecosystems. Or it may have been the other way around. In any event, 1,560 such little laboratories were created and populated. Where did the population come from? We don’t know. Perhaps it was created by modifying samples of real creatures from various parts of the universe. Perhaps they created them, a sobering thought. Ancient legends suggest that the people were actually Ancient Ones themselves, gods who chose to become mortal again because they felt bored, had nowhere else to go, and felt cheated that what appeared to be the end of evolution was such an empty life. One could imagine that after who knows how many thousands or millions of years of being a god, it would get pretty boring. One might find it more difficult to imagine a race of such gods committing mass suicide, as it were, starting their race over as many other races, just to find out if they had missed something and were at a dead end. Still, that is the legend.”
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