The Mother Temple was imposing; although no higher than the surrounding buildings, it was designed like a medieval castle of gleaming metal, with towers and short spires abounding. At night it was bathed in colored lights, but even at midday it was very impressive.
One approached by an impossibly long flight of stone stairs; the building itself was anchored in and rested against the solid bedrock of the mountains encircling the city.
To the right Mavra and Yua could see the Pilgrimage Trail which lead to the site of the first settlement. It didn’t look like too long a walk and Mavra suggested they visit it before entering the Temple proper. The Olympians may have been Obie’s children, but the dominant First Mothers had been Mavra Chang’s grandparents.
The well-kept trail was littered with signs, exhibits, and displays telling the story of the founding of Olympus, of how the First Mothers had fallen under the spell of the Evil One while on the mystical Well World, which was pictured as a heavenly paradise, then spirited back to the Com by the machinations of this otherwise undefined Evil One who was then defeated in a great battle, leaving the First Mothers victorious but cut off from Heaven, and how they decided to build their own new world here, on Olympus.
The early huts were indeed primitive; Mavra guessed that they need not have been so basic, that the simplicity was a deliberate attempt to force the building of a new race and culture from the ground up, with as little contamination from the Com as possible. The First Mothers had recognized from the beginning that they merely wore the form of beautiful human women; that inside, biologically and otherwise, they were an alien race and would have been treated as freaks in the then totally human Com. They had been wrong in one thing, though; mentally they had risen above humanity and they carried that with them.
Above, carved in rock and gilded, were the names of the eleven First Mothers. Most of them were not familiar to Mavra, as they’d been refugees from New Pompeii, but there, too, was Kally “Wuju” Tonge, and Vistaru, her grandparents, as well as Dr. Zinder’s daughter, Nikki, and Nikki’s daughter Mavra. And, after the eleven names there was one more, off by itself and bordered in thick gold.
MAVRA CHANG TONGE, it read.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” breathed Mavra Chang softly. “Damn me if I’m not feeling foolishly emotional.” There was a sense of history here, and family, and continuity after all, which seemed suddenly to grab at her soul.
Yua looked surprised. “Why, that’s you, isn’t it?” she gasped. “Somehow I just never thought of it!”
Mavra broke the silence. Turning, she said, flatly, “Let’s get this over with.” She walked back down the pathway not looking back and Yua followed. Outwardly, Mavra Chang was all business again.
Obie? Where are you now?
“There’s a lot of debris in the system,” the computer responded instantly. “I am well disguised but within range.”
You have a fix on me? She was climbing the long steps to the doors of the Mother Temple.
“I’m locked on,” Obie assured her. “Just let me know when and if you need something.”
Olympians were walking up and down the stairs and in and out the massive Temple doors. Most were tailed Aphrodites but one or two were tailless Athenes garbed in Temple robes and intent on some business or the other. It was a busy place.
The interior of the Mother Temple looked more like a spaceport lounge than a religious center; an intricate model of the Well World hung from the center of a huge chamber and myriad creatures had been depicted in the mosaic tiles that covered the floor and the walls. Many doorways and corridors led from the chamber and before each was a reception desk staffed by a priestess. The place was well organized, Mavra had to admit that.
Yua walked almost the length of the chamber before approaching a particular desk to give a crossed-arm salute and bow to the Aphrodite sitting there.
“Yua of Mendat to see Her Holiness,” she reported quickly.
The receptionist nodded slightly and checked a list, then looked back up at Yua. “You are back early, High Priestess. We had no word you were coming.”
“I report on discussions with the Com government of concern only to Her Holiness,” Yua responded a little icily. “She will see me.”
The receptionist shrugged almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t her problem. “I’ll tell Her Holiness you’re here,” she said, then looked over at Mavra. “Yes?”
“The sister is with me,” Yua covered quickly, “and bears on the report. I will take full responsibility.”
Dark eyebrows rose slightly. The Priestess punched Yua’s code. After a few seconds, a small green light glowed. “You may enter now,” she told them. “Reception Room three, on the right.”
They walked past the desk and down the hall. It was disappointingly mundane after the Temple facade and the grand hall—it looked like office-building corridors everywhere. The door to Reception Room 3 slid open as they approached. Inside were two backless stone benches almost in the center of the room and a small chair of some plastic material sculpted to hold the human form, slightly raised and facing the benches. It’s construction would have prohibited an Aphrodite from sitting; clearly this was Athene territory. A small table alongside the chair was the room’s only other furnishing.
Mavra and Yua had barely sat when the door opened behind them. They rose and turned as an Olympian in a scarlet robe walked in, up to the chair, and sat down, thus proving she had no tail. She had some files under her arm and placed them on the table.
“Hello, Yua,” she opened, nodding toward the High Priestess. “And who is this with you?”
Yua started to answer but Mavra cut her off. “I’m a spy,” she replied casually. “I am Mavra Chang.”
The Athene looked a little startled. “What the hell is this all about?” she snapped. “Are you mad?”
Obie? You got her?
“No problem, Mavra.”
A violet glow surrounded the Athene, her form seemed to sparkle. Then the glow died out suddenly.
The Athene stood, smiled at them, gave the crossed-arm salute, and asked softly, “How may I serve you?”
Yua was astonished, first at her superior and then again at Mavra Chang. Knowing nothing of Mavra’s link to Obie, Yua took this as further evidence that she was in the presence of a goddess.
“Who is in charge of Olympus?” Mavra Chang wanted to know.
“The Holy Mother, of course,” the Athene answered.
Mavra nodded. “She has the ultimate, absolute power here?”
“Why, yes, of course. We all obey the Holy Mother.”
“She is here, in this Temple?”
“Always,” the Athene assured her.
“I wish an audience as soon as possible. Can you arrange it?”
“Oh, yes, surely, although it is highly improper for her to do so. But—I shall need a reason to give her.”
She had considered that. “Tell her that Mavra Chang Tonge returns from the dead to find Nathan Brazil!”
The Athene supervisor returned shortly. “Please, follow me,” she requested.
They walked a short way to an elevator. Mavra saw from the buttons that there were ten floors—five above and five below ground, most likely. The Athene picked none of them; the door closed and the elevator descended of its own accord. Mavra watched as each floor button glowed when the elevator passed, until they reached the bottommost—and they descended another thirty meters or so, judging by the time that passed.
The door slid open revealing a dimly lit chamber. Mavra’s eyes could operate well in the infrared as could the Olympians’. Their view was distinct. The chamber was circular, the walls artificial but hard and without trace of opening but for the elevator doors, which stood at four opposing points and seemed to provide the only entrance and exit.
Mavra Chang turned to the two Olympians who had accompanied her. “Return to the surface and await my instructions,” she ordered in a whisper. They saluted and did as instructed. She was alone in that cold room.
Or was she? She wished she had Gypsy’s ability to say for certain. Her instincts told her that she was being observed from somewhere, but her eyes could not locate the source.
Suddenly the room seemed to burst into light; it was just that, but the effect was disorienting for a moment.
Obie’s voice came to her. “They’re projecting hypnotics at you. I’m neutralizing them.”
It figured, really. You couldn’t be a truly awesome leader unless you gave an awe-inspiring show. Again she thought of Gypsy. He’d love all this.
And now came the voice, incredibly ancient, impossibly weary, and altogether nonhuman. It was a voice somehow powerful yet filled with infinite sadness, a voice unlike any she’d heard before, and it seemed to issue from nowhere and everywhere at one and the same time. “Who and what are you?” it asked.
“Computer-amplified thought waves, first order,” Obie informed her. “This isn’t part of the show. It’s too complex for that.” He sounded puzzled, and Mavra didn’t like that at all.
“I am Mavra Chang,” she told the voice while straining to locate the source. If Obie was correct, the source could be in her own mind.
“Mavra Chang is dead,” the voice responded. “Mavra Chang is more than seven centuries dead.”
“Mavra Chang did not die,” she told the unseen person, creature, whatever. “No one can kill Mavra Chang.” Her own voice, she noted, echoed slightly; the other’s did not.
“You are mad, my child. Receive the spirit of your Holy Mother.”
Suddenly she felt pain, a massive headache and an attack along her entire central nervous system. Mavra dropped to the floor in agony. Slowly she could feel the other, the presence, creep in, invading her mind, starting to take control.
Obie, taken by surprise as well, was quick to react now. Through the link to the body he’d fashioned for Mavra he fought back, casting out the alien mental presence. It was not a battle; once Obie had analyzed the manner of mental attack he countered it instantly, leaving Mavra free but exhausted on the floor. She was in shock and would have liked to collapse but didn’t dare; her survival depended on a different tack. Slowly, unsteadily, she got to her feet and looked around. With a bravado she didn’t feel she shouted, “You see? Shall we talk or will I now come to your mind?” Anger was always a good tonic, and Mavra was mad as hell. “Who dares invade the mind of Mavra Chang?”
Obie approved. “Atta girl, tiger-cat! Steady and I’ll make you into you again! That’ll put the fear of god into ’em!”
She knew that Obie was reaching down to her, that her form was bathed in the violet glow, but the renewal was very quick and was not consciously apparent to her. She knew, though, that her lithe, black-clad human form was being seen by the unseen other or others. If they had any historical records they knew upon whose visage they now gazed. She could sense the astonishment in that strange alien voice-not-voice as it gasped, “You are Mavra Chang!”
“I am,” she acknowledged, grateful also that Obie had eliminated the shock. She felt in complete command. “And who are you?”
The voice was silent for a moment, apparently still astonished and perhaps a bit troubled by the power it had just witnessed. Finally it said, “I am Nikki Zinder.”
Once again it was Mavra’s turn to be shocked. “Now wait a minute! I know how I’m still around—but that’s not possible.” A computer, she guessed. A computer programmed to think it’s Nikki. That has to be it. Obie was strangely silent; built by Nikki’s father, he had considered the girl his sister.
Mavra remembered the original Nikki. Fat, naive, sheltered from reality by her father until they’d landed on the Well World. Nikki had been full of sponge. Mavra had battled to lead the girl and Renard, a servant who was also sinking fast because of the sponge, to a haven of sorts on the Well World. Renard had made love to the girl when they’d both thought they were dying; he, though, had been changed by the Well World into one of the satyrlike Agitar; Nikki had been grabbed by Obie and cared for by him in the minor control room. There she’d borne the daughter Renard had fathered, and named her Mavra. And it was there that both of them had been changed into the form now called Olympian or Pallas. They had been among the First Mothers.
But that had been seven centuries and more ago.
A machine that thinks it’s a long-dead person, Mavra thought glumly. How do you deal with a machine?
“New Pompeii was destroyed,” the voice noted. “I saw it with my own eyes. Obie was destroyed. The history tapes bear me out. You cannot be Mavra Chang.”
“Obie is alive. I remained. We only made it appear that we were destroyed. You know the power of Obie, you know that he could do this, know why I can still be alive and much as I was then. You have Nikki Zinder’s memories—you must know that this can be so.”
There was a short pause. “You speak as if I were not who I say,” the voice noted. “I tell you that I am Nikki Zinder. I have remained alive, now bound to this machine. But I am not a machine. My mind and soul live, are preserved and amplified by it.”
Mavra considered this. “But why? Why you, Nikki? Why not the others?”
“The others, like me, grew old. When it was clear that they would die, when Touri did die, they gathered and made their decision. They would find a Markovian gate; they would return to the Well World and be reborn yet again. They all left and, as far as I know, succeeded, my daughter included.”
“But not you?”
“Not I. We were barely two centuries started; the population was just approaching viability. The Pallas needed guidance to build the proper society, guidance only we of the First Mothers could give them. We had the proper technology. I proposed that we First Mothers be preserved, cybernetically linked to computers capable of sustaining us indefinitely, so that we could lead. The others refused, but they could not force me to accompany them. Since then I have remained; I have shaped the growth and development of my people and led them through the founding of the Fellowship. The greatness you see today is my work.”
Obie?
“I’m afraid it’s true, Mavra. I wish it weren’t. This explains the aberrant culture. Brain and soul can be preserved as she says, but brain cells do not regenerate. She’s got to be senile, Mavra—senile, probably quite mad, and still in complete control of a people who don’t know any better. Better play along.”
Mavra considered her words carefully. “Nikki, look. Your own people must have told you. The Com is doomed, perhaps everything is doomed, by stupid people who misused your father’s research. We must stop it, and that can only be done by fixing the Well of Souls itself. Only Nathan Brazil can do so, so we have common cause, your people and us. We have brought together the Com government and ourselves for this; we need your people for the legwork. Will you cooperate with us? Will you order that cooperation?”
Nikki seemed lost in thought. Finally the voice said, “Yes, Mavra. You will have whatever you require. The only condition is that Olympians be present when Nathan Brazil is found.”
“I think we can agree to that,” Mavra replied. “We think he might have been spooked by the cul—Fellowship, though, so we’ll have to be very careful when we find him that we don’t lose him again. I give you my word, though, as the same person who brought you from New Pompeii and kept you alive on the Well World, that your people will have access to him. Will you accept that?”
“It is sufficient,” the voice responded. “Go now. The orders have already been given.” She hesitated. “You can survive in our atmosphere as you are now?”
Mavra nodded. “Oh, yes.” An elevator door opened. She turned and walked toward it, then stopped and turned back to the empty chamber. “Good-bye, Nikki,” she whispered, then got on. The door closed.
Another elevator opened across from Mavra’s and two Athenes emerged in their cloaks of priestly scarlet. They entered the chamber, knelt, and awaited command.
“With a computer such as Obie, the Com records, and our own followers, Nathan Brazil will soon be found,” Nikki Zinder told them. “But beware. You saw how both the High Priestess Yua and the Arch-priestess Tala are bewitched?”
“We saw, Holy Mother,” they responded in unison.
“From Obie our race issued, but it issued at the command of the Evil One,” Nikki said. “We do not know what the Evil One did while in control of Obie, but we can be sure that he was the last one to control my father’s creation. It is more than likely, then, that Obie is still doing the bidding of the Evil One, for, as a machine, he has no choice. Mavra Chang was deformed and died in the assault on the Evil One; this I know for I was present. The thing we just saw was but a construct made by Obie, and, if made by Obie, it too is under the spell of the Evil One. Remember at all times that we are dealing with the devil incarnate; make certain that no others are placed under the spell as our two sisters have been. We require them to find Nathan Brazil. We have a pact with the Evil One, but the devil will keep his word only as long as it suits his needs. There is no honor in him, no trust or goodness. Monitor the operation; do what is requested, but keep out of the Evil One’s control, trust no one under it, and, when Nathan Brazil has been located, be certain that only we get to him. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Holy Mother,” they responded in unison. They had been dismissed and knew it; they reboarded the elevator.
Nikki Zinder, locked into her computer, was alone once more. Nevertheless the eerie voice continued to issue, a horrible crackling laughter.
“Oh, Evil One!” she said to no one. “You think to imprison the Lord God so that you may destroy the Universe! But you will not, you’ll see. As your visage haunts and torments me in the male child, now your very self comes to trick me! I’ll not let you, I’ll not, I’ll not . . .”
Silence reigned briefly in the chamber, then the eerie voice spoke once more, this time in the forlorn, plaintive tones of a very small girl.
“Oh, Daddy! Daddy! I want you so . . .”