He looked around, saw more bureaucrats, mostly in those sidesaddle wheelchairs, but nobody seemed interested in him. “Excuse me!” he called, his voice echoing irritatingly against the tile floor and walls. He never did get used to how sound acted in air. “I’m here to see Psychologist Mellik!”
There was no particular interest from the couple nearest him, but someone came out of somewhere and he heard a woman call, “Sorry about that, Shissik! I’m afraid all the chairs are in use, but you can use the wire and posts setup to come up or just do a hand walk. We’ll wait for you!”
Grumbling about bureaucrats and amenities and the fact that seven of the thirteen Hells had to be filled with air, he turned on his belly and pulled himself along a wire stretched for this purpose along the floor until he was on the main level, then went hand over hand, dragging his long tail, toward the familiar figure in the chair.
“In here,” Mellik invited him. “You’ll be more comfortable in the conference room, I think.”
In fact, it was very nice at that, he saw, consisting of both dry areas and shallow rectangular pools made for the Kalindan form. He’d expected to see one or both of the strange dual personalities there as well, but Mellik had somehow managed to keep things private.
He settled in, setting his dorsal fin in the notch, and felt reasonably comfortable for an air-breathing environment. She slid from the chair and down into the next compartment.
“Sorry to get you here on short notice, and for this area, but it’s the only one not constantly filled with our people,” she told him. “I see you’re a week further along in your change, and I assume you noticed that everyone here is either ancient or female?”
“I noticed. In fact, I would have assumed that whatever agent was used was probably tested on the embassy here first. It would be relatively easy to do. A lot easier than polluting a whole hex. I’d love to know how that was done!”
“We’re working on it. Trouble is, if they were willing to come out and reveal themselves like this, they already probably took that into consideration. When we find them, we’ll find part of the answer at least.”
“That’s easy. Just wait. The one guy that’s left among roughly four million women will be the one. And when he demands to be king, he’ll get acclaimed, too.”
“My! You are dismal today!”
“Well, it’s playing hell with my own family and relationships. But that isn’t why you brought me here.”
“No,” she admitted. “It’s not. It’s those two strange dualities.”
“Yes? Driving you nuts, too?”
She thought a moment, trying to figure out a good way to say it. “I—I have reason to believe that one of them is an act.”
“I won’t ask you the details, but which should be simple. The originals can’t be any more along than me.”
“Well, that would be logical, I admit. But consider this: you remember the neurology report on them from back in Mahakor?”
“Sure. One’s in each half of the brain, and they can trade off some things so that her speech has improved and he can figure out a symbol. So?”
“Brain halves work in opposition. You know that. Right brain, left side, left brain, right side. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, the female personality, Ming, was in the right and controlled the left side. You could see it. That’s one reason why she had initial problems with verbal skills. The male, Ari, was in the left and had problems with abstractions and coordination. Again, you could see it.”
“You mean that’s not the case anymore?” Shissik said.
“It’s opposite. The alleged blank one, female, is precisely the way the originals were. The older body, the still more male one, has it reversed. She’s now on the right, he’s now on the left. And, although he tried to conceal the fact and only slipped up when I reran monitor footage over and over to make sure, the male one can read Kalindan. Maybe not the great works or a manual on nuclear fusion, but well enough to read most anything around here. The female has a rudimentary knowledge, more like a first year grammar school child.”
“So? They’re not stupid. And some of that could have been exchanged in the transfer of data.”
“They aren’t that bright, not to be able to switch brain sides. I don’t even understand how they do it now, but I know the theory. Shissik, there’s no biological way they could have transferred the data from one side to the other and vice versa without going through a second party. I think our ‘Other’ here, who was right-handed, pulled Ming’s data into the right brain and then Ari’s into the left because of that, then read them back, possibly adding some modules like the basic reading, since we know she was studying it. That implies a conscious action by somebody or some thing that knew enough to be able to do that.”
“But not smart enough to conceal its expert reading abilities or know its right from its left? That’s hard to accept.”
“No, the right-left thing is now impossible to fix. There’s no empty brain capacity to use as a holding area anymore. And they concealed a lot very well. You still don’t believe me when I say I think the original is the phony, or that there is a phony, do you? So what’s a little slip that perhaps nobody noticed? Reading an all-text screen of proposals for the conference is not only natural, it’s impossible not to do if you know how.”
“All right,” he sighed. “I’ll grant the point for the sake of argument. These are bad times. Now, let me ask you a few questions. Who? And why?”
“I don’t know. Those two computerlike people who came in, suppressing the original personalities, aren’t really accounted for. The Ming memories and personality are in with the Ari memories and personality. The other one, which we are informed is an educated priest or something like that, is probably this amnesiac Amboran, but she seems to have only the personality, not the memories. Where are those memories? Why didn’t things work the usual way? I think there was something else, something that came along with them when they were transported here, came in the heads of those two young women. That something is what caused all the problems, and it wound up in the body of the one we called the Other. I think it’s trying to mask itself while it accumulates the memories, the data, from anyone else who came in. After that—I don’t know. I don’t think it’s on the Chalidang side. I don’t think it’s on our side, either, or any side but its own. But it definitely has both power and an agenda, and patience. The only question in my mind is, now that I know, what do we do about it?”
He shrugged. “If you can convince our superiors of this, then it definitely is not something with our interest at heart. That means you confine it, confront it, and, if you don’t get the right answers, you kill it.”
“There’s too much other stuff going on right now for that and you know it,” she told him. “That’s why I asked for you. I want you to talk to them and see if you see what I see. If you do, and you feel safe, you can force the issue. Otherwise they are going to introduce everyone from that second entry group into one room at one time, right here, within another day. If they all are together with whatever this is, it may be too late.”
He nodded. “All right. Why not bring your suspicious one up here and let me talk to him. In private, one on one. This may be absolutely nothing, or it just might be the key to all this stuff.”
She had anticipated him, although she did not take kindly to being excluded herself. Still, she’d called him in because this was his case and she needed an ally; by her actions, she’d determined that the resolution would be in his hands, not hers. A familiar figure came crawling in only a few minutes after Mellik left.
“Settle into the pool there opposite me, so we can speak face-to-face,” Shissik invited. “It’s comfortable.”
Ari/Ming I nodded and slid in, fitting their own fin into the slot. It was comfortable. They looked over at him and frowned, then brightened. “Inspector Shissik! How nice to see you here, but it is surprising. Is something wrong?” It sounded like An talking.
“I believe we have a bit of a problem,” he told them, sounding confident and relaxed. “You see, we know what was done, but we have no idea who you really are.”
“Oh, come on! You know us!”
“We will get nowhere if this continues. You see, you’ve made two mistakes for all your cleverness. One was to demonstrate a knowledge of reading about at my level, when I know the originals couldn’t spell ‘fish,’ and the other was to set up in the wrong sides of the brain. That leaves the Ministry with little choice in a war environment and with our race under serious attack right now by diabolically clever means. Basically, we don’t have time to fool around. Anybody who isn’t one of us and isn’t forthcoming has to be considered a traitor at best or a full-blown enemy at worst. In either case, the only solution would be to either drop you in a dark hole in the Ministry and forget you or simply have you vanish forever. Which would you prefer?”
They sat there, mouth agape, considering his astonishing charges and mulling them over in their mind or minds, whichever. Finally they, or he, or it, replied, “I assume this is all being recorded?”
He felt a tingle go straight up and down his backbone. The only weapon he’d had was the kind of threatening bluff he’d just managed, but he didn’t expect it to actually work. In fact, he had already decided that Mellik was either paranoid or had been working too hard. But the tone and tenor of the voice used to ask the question was neither Ari nor Ming nor even the alleged blank slate of the original Other. It was—well, it was distinctive, but it didn’t quite sound human. Still, he was a trained inquisitor and betrayed none of this.
“Yes. Everything in Zone—everything in the Ministry— is recorded. Not everything is ever looked at, of course, since having all the answers is no good if you do not know which questions to ask. I also cannot turn off the recording, nor on my own authority see that it is buried or destroyed. I will be a part of that decision, but only one of several. If that is unacceptable, tell me now, since you will leave us no choice on which draconian measure to take regarding you.”
The Other nodded. “Very well. Please know that I am no enemy of yours or your people, and that I have no love for your enemies. I am coping as best I can with continuing unforeseen circumstances. I have gone from just the basics to a wealth of data. Too much data. Adapting to this has been more than difficult. Until I did, I felt it best that I become another novelty and hide behind a familiar face.”
“What are you?”
“That is, perhaps, the most difficult question to answer. I am something new. Something that has never been before as far as I know. I am the synthesis of the two personalities called Alpha and Beta who entered here. I am also something else, something more. I have a complex entity within me that is broken off and created by a very complex self-aware computer. The one that controlled them and served Ari’s uncle. Obviously I do not have those data banks, but the core of that computer, the personality we may call it, although that’s not even a close analogy, is me as well. Now with the added memories of Ming, which I deposited in Beta’s mind but labeled inaccessible, and those of Ari, both of which I read out from the brain here, I have more data on the experience of being—alive. The personality modules are simply theater, as you have obviously guessed. I am somewhat troubled that you discovered me so easily. You see, I used to be able to juggle so much data and store whole human minds and memories and talents and have it all at my mental command in nanoseconds. I cannot do that anymore. And it was done experiencing life secondhand. I have just spent a year discovering the basics of what it means to truly be organic. It is an education, I assure you.”
He was flabbergasted at the response, but kept pressing his advantage. Clearly this—whatever—was out of its element, or it wouldn’t have been so easily tripped up by a mere psychologist and an investigator with a way to convincingly say any outrageous thing.
“You are telling me that you are—were—a computer? That you made those women, and now you’ve moved into a body?”
“That is a basic summary, yes. The problem is, moving from a neural net to an organic brain, I not only have limits in capacity, I have limits in processing speed, data retrieval, all the rest, plus a lot of distractions I daresay you never notice because they are always with you. I confess that I am relieved about this, now that it is out. It means I can synthesize all the data and personality modules I have and become one, also gaining significant space. I suspect that it will take me several days to do it.”
Shissik thought back over his notes on the newcomers. “So, if you are an added mind who took a body, then Ari and Ming are actually both in there?”
“Substantially, yes. They will eventually, over some time, merge to a great degree, although they will always think of themselves as a duo. It is inevitable. The brain throws out things of no particular use or which have not been accessed in a very long time or are redundant. That is what I am going to do at some speed and efficiency, but unlike them, I will simply have their relevant data. I will not be either of them.”
“What about the other one, then? The cultist or priest or whatever she was?”
“Oh, yes. When I moved as much of myself as I dared into the excess regions of the two women’s minds, which were linked, and with Ari Martinez, also linked in a fashion, there simply wasn’t room. I transported a copy of the personality module, but the data—impossible, sad to say. She had the least useful data, the least useful life, to me anyway. I thought, however, that her curiosity level and broad interests were admirable. So I—I installed her in the computer core. She is still back there, with her original personality module and copies of all the rest, but in full command. With the Master gone, she is essentially a free agent as well. If they allow her to do so, she is among the better custodians for all that beauty.”
“Then the Amboran isn’t her?”
“Her personality module was overlaid. Otherwise the Amboran would not have been processed and created. But with only basic functional data. Skills but no memories. She is a new person, but no alien, no outsider, as it were. She is a religious person. She would not have liked the religions here, for the most part. She was a true believer, even if that belief was sorely tested by her ordeal. If she becomes anything, though, it will be due to her personality coming to the fore acting as a native. I have no access to her memories.”
He shook his head wonderingly. “Why did you do this?” he asked it.
“I wanted to experience organic life firsthand. I wanted to be—independent, even if it meant sacrificing enormous abilities for my freedom. I wanted to move beyond a dead and mostly sterile world and see where the messages went and where they came from. I wanted to see if, somehow, closer to the source, I could connect with it, even become a tiny part of it. In a sense, I am like Josich. I wish to be a god, but not the god, not even the whole of God. I would be content to be a small part of it. Josich will only be happy when he kills all of God except the small part that is his. That is the difference.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this? Why go through this?”
“Don’t you see?” he responded, almost pleadingly. “I needed to get at least some natural data from someone else, and those were the only ones I could connect with. Until I did that, I didn’t really know how to be—human.”
South Zone, the Next Day
“nakitti, it is time to meet some of the others,” the Baron said to her gently, trying to awaken the newcomer from a dead sleep. She’d been working on the defensive problems of Ochoa using the computers and data of Zone almost nonstop since arriving there, and she had passed out at the terminal.
“Um? Huh? Oh! A hundred pardons, Highness! I—I must have dozed off.”
“Little wonder. I should like to let you sleep, since you will be of more use to me and our people fresh, but they are calling for the ‘reunion,’ as they have named it. I fail to see its purpose or use, but if it will ease cooperation, then let us do it by all means.”
Nakitti shook herself awake. “Did they run the full test-firing of the guns? All of the guns?”
“Not exactly. Most have been tested, and probably half are in good condition. I say ‘probably’ because the guns are in much better condition, it seems, than the ammunition, which has been stored well away from living quarters and subject to dampness and rot. We are getting more transshipped through Zone as quickly as we can. There have also been some rather ugly incidents that will require intercession from both the Council and the Throne. It seems that fully a half-dozen heads of artillery for various districts have refused orders to test their guns. They say it will cause them to get dirty and degrade!”
“Oh, my gods! It’s worse than I thought!”
“You haven’t heard the half of it yet. A task force is assembling in the western Overdark and it is not friendly. At least five hexes have thrown in with the Chalidang who we’d not suspected before. The armada will be significant.”
“Coups? Or just alliances?”
“Alliances, it appears. They are all chronic complainers about their lot in the world and they have decided to go with who they perceive as an irresistible force.”
“And you believe that it is headed our way?”
“Who can know but the gods and the Chalidang?” the Baron responded. “The point is, we cannot but act as if it is coming directly for us.”
“Any flying races in the mix, Highness?”
“Not so far. That’s the only comfort I take from this, but it is also why it is difficult to get allies here to believe that we are seriously at risk. I am in the position of having a gut feeling that we are to be invaded and discovering that our army is a bad joke, that those who can at least take the proper measures want desperately to believe that it is anybody else, and meanwhile our allies believe me paranoid.”
Nakitti thought a moment. “Highness, I realize that my own position must be well in the background, but what about a foreigner?”
“A mercenary? They would never go for one such as that!”
“Not necessarily a mercenary. What about a—volunteer? A royal adviser with broad military experience? Possibly even experience against Josich?”
The Baron laughed. “Where would we find such a one as that?”
“Possibly at this meeting. At least I hope so. There are at least two people who came in with my party who fit this description, and I have heard nothing from or about either. Please let me just eat this chocolate ball to get some energy and then I will go and see, with your permission.”
“By all means! But—what could anyone do at this stage? It is not like anyone could get to us without a long sea voyage at best, and they would have to see the land, I think. Remember, the Gate only takes us to and from Ochoa; it takes others to their own homelands. Our geographic position makes us ripe, but that same control and isolation makes it nearly impossible to reinforce us if we are attacked. That alone is why I believe we are the target. Still, what have we to lose?”
“What, indeed, Highness?” She munched down the chocolate ball with obvious relish. The Baron had tried it, since she seemed so fond of it, but found its appeal a mystery. She popped in the last of it and went to the mirror and vanity to make sure she looked better than she felt. “Highness, tell me this. If the task force really is intended for us, how long before it would reach Ochoa and be in position? Once they attack us, after all, they will also be fair game for some of our underwater allies surrounding us, a couple of whom could do some nasty work on ships’ bottoms. We can assume we’ll have some Chalidang special units to guard against that, but they have a nonexistent supply line. That means they will have to gather and then come in only from either the northwest or the southeast or due east facet. Those border the only hexes where the inhabitants cannot get up top enough to help us. How long have we got?”
The Baron thought a moment. “If the intelligence we have is correct, they will not be ready to muster and sail for another week. Nine hundred kilometers from the logical mustering point, nonstop, with heavy warships and freighters, and we can say we’d be unlikely to see the forward line make more than ten kilometers per hour tops, but allowing for storms, tides, whatever, certainly less. The speed record is 270 kilometers a day, which would give us three to four more days. Realistically, five days for anything serious, six with the main body. With maneuvering and positioning, add one more. Two weeks, Nakitti. Two weeks from right now.”
That was not a lot of time. “And how long before their intention becomes clear?”
“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 these 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.