“If there are no intelligence leaks ahead of it, we will know for certain about two days after they sail. That is even less. We cannot wait that long.”
She nodded. “No, we can’t. I had better go get some help quickly if I can!”
“Nakitti?”
“Yes, Highness?”
“What were you? Back there in that other existence, that is? Before Ochoa?”
“Why, Highness, I thought it was obvious! I was a spy! I have copied and read the military secrets of empire!”
With that she bent her head and opened her wings in respectful salute and then, folding them again, backed out of the room.
The Baron stared after her, still not sure what to make of this brilliant newcomer. A spy? For whom? All the information he had was that this Realm was a sort of empire of races that coexisted peacefully after the defeat of a tyrant who had massacred whole worlds, and gotten so far because before that there was no unity. A reflection of this situation here, in fact, even down to facing the exact same tyrant. So who was she spying for? And against?
He had little doubt that she was very much on his side.
Across the expanse of the embassy sections, the Kalindans, too, were facing the same summons, only now they had an extra complication.
“It cannot be permitted to go! We still don’t know just what is in that head, or what someone with that power might have done when transferring the true personalities to the other body!” Mellik was genuinely upset, but she was also doing her job.
“My dear, we have no choice in this,” the Interior Minister told her. “I believe we must send them all and simply monitor the response. It is not like they can get away, and we must know about these people now. Considering that bounder Josich and its relatives, a lot of high officials from powerful and influential hexes here want to simply do away with all of them. The only thing that stops them is that this always remains an option, and they may just be of use. Our own position is that they know this enemy better than we, and if nothing else, we need their experience. Fortunately, the current High Commissioner, Ambassador Dukla, agrees with us, but his term expires in a week. Let us go along. This is Zone, child! Even the Chalidangers, who are of course not here, respect the sanctity of Zone, since to not do so would bring down the weight of all the others upon it in ways few know and understand. Let us go.”
Ari and Ming were almost as shocked and appalled as the Kalindan investigators at the truth, and had been only too eager to submit to all sorts of mental tests to determine if they were still the same people. But as far as anyone could tell, the only thing that had changed, to Ming’s great irritation, was that they were now very definitely female, something they were going to be in the first body anyway.
Pity, though, Ming told him. I’d so hoped that one of us could have had the other body and the other would have this one. I figured it was the one that was supposed to be either of us anyway. In fact, it probably is the way it was supposed to be. Who would believe that a computer could do that? Or would want to?
I wonder if that’s a small scale version of this whole world, of what we’re sitting on, Ari worried. If a machine we designed and built can move into flesh, then what could a monster built by the Ancient Ones do?
Well, he says we, or he, broke it. At least, it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. And if something of the Ancient Ones isn’t working like it’s supposed to, what’s the surprise that one of ours isn’t? Besides, it’s been hundreds of years since any organic brain could design and build a computer. This was designed and built by other computers. You know that. Makes you wonder about back home, doesn’t it?
Huh? he responded. Worried about what back home?
Suppose this is the start of a trend? The beginning of the end? That the machines are going to move into our bodies, or maybe declare them irrelevant and start doing their own things? You think maybe that’s what happened to the Ancients who built this place?
It was an unsettling thought. More unsettling to them, though, was that the Other, whom they’d accepted as a twin—in fact, they’d just about accepted that they were the copies—was something totally alien who nonetheless knew everything they knew. Ari in particular was worried that the mental slavery he’d experienced on the way in was possible once again. Could this—creature—take control of them at will? What about the others? Was this really just a way to turn them into a multiracial Alpha and Beta with the ability to swim, walk, fly, breathe air or water? Was Core, as it said to call it, more of a threat in the long run than Josich?
Ming had no memory of being Beta; she remembered up to the point where Jules Wallinchky had begun the final indoctrination and then it was all a blank. She knew what she’d been like, but it was secondhand, as seen by Ari’s memories, not hers.
Well, if it’s telling the truth, it’s left a major complex under the complete control of a committed nun or priestess or whatever that group is. It may throw a real jar of glue in the evolution of the machine!
That worry’s not our fight, she noted. Let’s go see what’s literally become of the rest.
They didn’t have far to go. Because it was least practical for them to have to travel and cope for long in the land environment, particularly with its dry, conditioned, mostly low humidity air, the others were coming here, to the meeting room above.
Once out of hiding, Core had assumed an essentially neutral personality that was neither of them, nor the slavish absolutes of Alpha and Beta, but rather an odd but pleasantly social sort. Neither the voice nor the manners had much personality at all, but in that it wasn’t unlike a lot of people they’d known over the years. It made them very uncomfortable, though.
Waiting inside was a creature of a type they’d never seen before. It was unquestionably a water hex creature, but large and with some weight, and it clearly was able to withstand being out of the water, although it had a breather wrapped around where the gills probably were, making it look like it was wearing giant earmuffs, and it was in one of the pools but clearly uncomfortable in it.
The head was equine, very much like a horse’s, but with a solid snout that ended in a circular orifice that pulsated in and out. The eyes on either side of the head were huge, black, and slightly protruded from the skull, and were clearly independent of one another. Two tiny ears twitched on either side of the body, and there was a membrane that suggested a mane that started in the center of the head and moved down its back. The neck went into a serpentine body and ended in three armlike branches. The center branch terminated in a fan-shaped membrane and seemed designed for something other than the other two; the other two, however, ended in extremely long fingers, three on top and one beneath and a bit shorter in opposition, ending in dartlike suckers. The arms, indeed the whole creature, appeared fragile, but they sensed that this was only true on land, and that in the water this creature could more than take care of itself.
“Come in, settle into the pools,” the creature invited them, appearing to speak Kalindan with a neutral accent. Since the orifice pulsed but was not designed to speak such words, they knew this one had a translator implanted inside it. “The duo over to my right, please, and Core, take the one on my left. The others are on their way. Everyone can speak freely here. I have enabled a device here that effectively creates a zone of translation within the room. It’s the only way we can negotiate with each other over long periods here—personnel both in the hexes and in Zone are constantly changing, and not everyone can have a translator implant. Be warned, however, that if you leave this room you will no longer have this ability.”
Core settled in, then looked at the creature. “And you are?”
“My name is Dukla. I am High Commissioner in South Zone, which is a fancy title meaning I am the titular head and station chief here representing all the embassies. About half of us rotate in this position, which is not one of great power but is necessary because somebody has to be able to say yes and no or, more often, ‘buy it’ or ‘forget it,’ to all thes
e creatures. Next week they’ll draw somebody else’s name and I’ll be back to being merely the ambassador from Olan Cheen. That probably means nothing to you, but it is another nation like Kalinda that sits beneath the Overdark and happens to be in a direct link between Chalidang in the west and an isolated volcanic archipelago in the middle of the ocean called Ochoa. That significance will become obvious in a few minutes, I think. I am a native but I know quite a bit about your old race and the Realm. Neither you nor the Hadun are the first through here. People fall into the Gate now and then, and we get perhaps a half dozen or so a month. Not necessarily from the Realm—it’s a very big universe—but some are. We try and keep up. The Hadun slipped through the cracks because we couldn’t believe they were the very same people who had caused such misery a century and a half ago. A little knowledge doesn’t always work any better than no knowledge at all.”
“You called this gathering?” Ari asked him.
He nodded absently. “Something is very wrong here. Wrong beyond Josich, I mean. Two individuals in one body. A personality with no memory in another. A third that turns out to be a truncated computer core program. Even the Well is not totally self-aware, you see. The Ancients gave it very strict limits so it would be God the Maintenance Worker of the Universe, as it were, and not just God. I do not mean that it doesn’t think, but it thinks in a way that even our Mister Core here, I don’t believe, could understand.”
“You are most certainly correct in that I have no concept of how it thinks, if that limited term is applicable to such a being,” Core agreed. “However, I also am not at all certain that it does not have an active role. It simply has one on a level beyond the ability of any of us to comprehend.”
“You show your own limits with that reply,” Dukla commented. “You assume that it is superior to the Ancients. I think not. In the rare cases where Ancients have interacted inside the Well, they have clearly been the operators.”
That brought the other two up straight in their pools. “There are living Ancients!” Ari managed.
“Well, at least one or two. They hate it here and do not stay. They wander the universe and do what we cannot know. When something goes wrong, one of them or all, it is difficult to judge, are summoned to repair the Well. As far as we can tell, this has not happened in this case. Either the Well is not broken, or its ability to send for help is impaired for some reason, or, for still other unknown reasons, the watchers cannot or will not come. Either way, we are on our own.”
“But how do you know that they are not here?” Core asked.
“Because we know what they look like. It is in the records. We know where they will appear and as what. None known have come. It is—ah! Here is another!”
Nakitti entered and looked around. “Too bad,” she commented. “I like a nice bath myself, but I’ll never fit in one of those.”
“Nakitti a Oriamin of Ochoa,” Dukla said in introduction. “Formerly known as Tann Nakitt the Ghoman, I believe. These are the ones you knew as Ari and Ming in one body, and that, over there, calls himself Core.”
Core looked up at the Ochoan. “An evolutionary branch off certain types of pterodactyls,” he noted. “Extraordinary.”
“Hey! Watch who you’re calling a—whatever you called me!” Nakitti snapped.
“An ancient flying creature related to both reptiles and birds that became extinct sixty or more million years ago on ancient Terra,” Core explained. “Similar designs have been found on other worlds, but you are the first sentient branch I know. Of course, I do not have my full databases anymore so I cannot be sure.”
“Sure sounds like a damned machine,” Nakitti snapped. “So? This thing stole a body and you two are married forever whether you want to be or not, huh? If one of you wasn’t a cop and the other one of the guys who got me into this mess in the first place, I’d feel real sorry for you.” She turned back to Core. “And what about you? If your old master showed up as a giant asshole right now, would you be required to kiss it?”
Core took the question seriously and replied, “I simply do not know the answer to that.” It put a real chill in the room.
“Yeah, so, who’s missing? The martial arts girl who got turned into a roving terminal? I’m sorry, Ambassador, but I was a kidnap victim of these folks and I’m here by accident and I don’t have many friends among that group. I do have a ton of problems to solve and the clock’s running, though, so I can’t waste an entire afternoon here singing ‘My Old School Walls.’ ”
“Just relax, Nakitti,” Dukla told him. “Remember, I am on your side and solving Ochoa’s problem also solves my problems. Ah! And here is another most unique new inhabitant. Please! Come in, child!”
Jaysu walked into the room and looked around uncertainly, feeling more out of place than ever. She had never seen the like of any of them before, even in the brief time here in Zone, and she found them more like the totems of Ambora than real people. Even so, she wasn’t scared of them. It was odd, but she hadn’t been scared of anybody lately.
“Oh, my god! She’s an angel!” Ari breathed. “Right out of the great religous paintings. She’s even got a halo of sorts!”
Wasn’t that her name originally? Angel something or other? Ming reminded him.
She stared at Ari and Ming. “There are two of you in one? How is this possible? And you know who I was and where I came from?”
Take it, Ming. Too much of a Catholic upbringing, I guess. She gives me the creeps.
Jaysu frowned. “I do not want to give anyone the—what did you call it? ‘Creeps?’ ”
“You can read our minds?” Ming asked her. “You are still telepathic!”
“I-Is that what I am doing? I do not know. I know only that I have somehow been able to read what others read or write, and that I can understand many others even if they do not have this translator thing. Am I truly reading minds? That is most disturbing. I do not wish to do it.”
“Don’t knock it, if it’s you doing it and you’re in control,” Ming told her. “Can you read the minds of the others?”
She turned and looked at Dukla, then at Nakitti, and finally at Core. She stopped only when she looked at Core, shuddering. “This one is not like any of the rest of you,” she said.
“You got that right,” Nakitti commented. “So, we don’t need to keep introducing ourselves with you, anyway. Wow! Are those real feathers? Those are so gorgeous!”
Ming looked over at Core. “Don’t get any funny ideas. Let her alone!”
Core seemed transfixed somehow by the angelic being. Finally he said, “I—I have no intention of doing her harm. I— There is something proactive about her on levels I cannot fathom and have never seen. Look deep. I do not believe anyone can do her harm. I think she is beyond where even I am in one sense.”
“I have known the Amborans here since I took this position,” Dukla told them, “and I have never seen one such as she. Accelerated evolution?”
“Possibly,” Core responded.
“Well, you made her,” Ming snapped. “If you don’t know, who does?”
Jaysu felt the tension in the room and it disturbed her. “Please stop this! If I am the source of any animosity between you all, then I shall be more than happy to leave. I did not wish to be here in the first place, as I know none of you do and have no memories of anything in my past.”
“Do you want to know?” the High Commissioner asked her, both curious and because it was now possible for her to do so.
“I used to anguish and agonize over it,” the Amboran admitted. “Now, though, I find it curiously irrelevant. I have no interest in it.”
“Did anybody tell you what you were then? A priestess?” Ming asked her. “That should at least tell you that you’re where you are supposed to be.”
“I have not doubted that since my installation,” she responded. “Again, it is irrelevant. I am who and what I am. It was ordained this way by powers higher than me, powers I neither understand nor question, but serve. You both
are afraid that this other one can make you slaves and do things to your mind. He can, but only if you do so willingly. He cannot do it merely by touch. Does that make you feel better?”
“How do you know that?” Ming asked her.
“I know that the sun rises and the air is fresh and clean where I should live. I do not question how I know. I seem to know things as required.” She turned and looked at Core. “You are afraid that you will be returned to slave status should your old master return. Again, only if you so choose. If you do so choose, however, the decision will be irreversible. You have never had to face a choice of your life or your soul before. You may.”
“Do we drag out the crystal ball and watch the table rise?” Nakitti griped. “Then perhaps we could do horoscopes for that new sky out there, the one with a million times more visible stars and not a one we knew. What’s the difference?”
She looked over at Nakitti, who felt the power of that gaze. It was unnerving; it seemed to go right through her.
“You mask fear and worry with cynicism. It is a part of you, but it is not an attractive part. He is already smitten with you. If you were to truly let go, if you are capable of doing so, he may even love you, and there will be far less of the nobility in the coming times.”
“Okay, you do your homework. You’re good. I’m not sure whether to hope that you’re right or you’re wrong, but it doesn’t do anything for me,” Nakitti said with the same sour tone.
“It may,” she responded. “You and he do not know it yet, but you are already carrying his child.”
It was said so matter-of-factly, Nakitti almost believed it, but hoped there was nothing to it. The last thing she needed now was pregnancy. Hell, even in the best of times, she wasn’t at all ready to be a mother. You had to at least not want to eat all children first, and the Baron was up to his wingtips in heirs as it was.
Yeah, sure.
Damn, she was irritating! When you can’t even lie to yourself around her, you’re really vulnerable. I wonder if we could send her to Josich?
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