“What you call magic,” Nixie supplied. “The bolts of energy that some adepts could project at will. The ability of some to levitate themselves and other objects up off the ground.”
Danchekker raised a finger to hold the room’s attention for a moment longer. “The strongest currents, however, flowed high above the surface as celestial phenomena. Through their ability to influence objects and events remotely as we have already seen, some of the Ents discovered how to draw these currents lower until they could intercept the flow directly. With this power available to be transformed into force, they could actually be carried away, up to the exit zones—and that, of course, is how they came to find themselves in the neural systems that the couplers were linked to, looking out at a new state of existence which none had seen other than as a vision, and many had never seen at all.”
Shilohin glanced at the others to assess their reactions. “The information pattern that constituted the Ent personality was somehow impressed upon the datastream and transferred with it to express itself in the brain patterns of the Exoverse host.”
Danchekker remained still for a few seconds. Then he let go of his pose and stalked slowly across the room until he was standing in front of the display panel near Nixie. “Exactly how is something I’m not entirely clear about,” he admitted.
Neither was Hunt. “Are Calazar and his people going to buy it?” he asked, looking around. “According to VISAR, the pictures that Nixie remembers are really constructs built from the elements activated in her human neural system. That’s why she remembers herself as having human form. Doesn’t that give us an indication of just how ‘alien’ the intelligence-carrying complexes that evolved in the Entoverse were? How could a mind with origins like that have found anything sufficiently compatible in a human head to give it a basis for functioning at all?”
Danchekker turned away from the blank screens. “Oh, I agree, it’s remarkable. Quite astonishing, in fact, if you want my candid opinion. But are we not driven to the conclusion that it happened? Exactly how it happened is a question we can only defer until we are better equipped with the information necessary to have a hope of answering it. Perhaps we simply don’t know enough about minds.” He tossed out a hand. “Which gives us an even stronger reason for wanting Uttan investigated.”
“I take it this process was irreversible?” Garuth asked.
“Oh, quite,” Danchekker replied, nodding. “The configuration defining the Ent-being was lost when it entered the output zone. Lost from that universe, literally.”
“Like a black—hole transfer,” Hunt remarked. “The information content was extracted and reappeared elsewhere.”
“Nothing physical was actually extracted then?” Not a scientist, Garuth was still having to grapple with a lot of this new idea. “What happened to the Ent-bodies?”
Shulohin looked at him, pausing for a moment before answering. “I don’t think you completely have the point, Garuth,” she said. “There was nothing physical. They were only information constructs to begin with. Their whole world was. The fact that they perceived it as having material form was purely an evolutionary artifact of their universe.”
“Ah, yes. . . now I see.” Garuth sat back to absorb the implication fully. Then he frowned. “Yet, didn’t you say they had a way of going back? Nixie told us about ‘spirits’ who returned to inspire and recruit disciples, and taught them how to arise in turn.”
“There was another way,” Danchekker supplied. “The Jevlenese neural couplers, which the ayatollahs could use, just like anyone else. They found that via the couplers—”
Just then, ZORAC interrupted, saying it had an urgent message.
“What is it, ZORAC?” Garuth inquired.
“Langerif, the deputy chief of police, is outside the door now. He states that he is taking control of PAC in the name of Jevlenese independence and self-determination. He requests that you instruct your administration staff to transfer all powers and authority accordingly, effective as of now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Garuth rose to his feet bemusedly as Langerif strode haughtily into the room, followed by several of his officers. He was holding a written proclamation of some kind, which he set down on the desk. All of the group were wearing sidearm: standard Jevlenese police-issue beam pistols, which could fire a variable plasma charge that could be set anywhere from a mildly uncomfortable shock to lethality.