ENTOVERSE

The flier approached the stratified cliffs of built-up structures looming above the boundary screen of trees. A vast, bright opening yawned ahead and became one of the main aerial traffic corridors piercing the city. The flier accelerated and merged into the flow. Between Murray and the stone-faced Ichena on his other side, Hunt brooded silently to himself, wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into now.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Calazar, on Thurien, and Torres, inside the Shapieron, and Caldwell, who had appeared on-line from Earth, debated the situation for a long time after contact through the probe was lost. Soon after Cald­well joined in the discussion, the Jevlenese blocked all communica­tions from ZORAC out of Geerbaine. Since the rest of Jevlen’s system of satellites and links had been controlled locally by JEVEX and not by VISAR, it meant that all other access to the planetary network was denied also.

For the moment, then, there was no alternative but to hope that Hunt and the others with him would complete for themselves what Porthik Eesyan had been about to say when the connection was lost, namely that the only tactic that immediately presented itself was to get VISAR hooked into JEVEX, somehow, on Jevlen. The general feeling was that they would. Whether or not they would be able to find a way of accomplishing it was another matter.

What then? If the group on Jevlen did succeed in getting VISAR connected into JEVEX, what, exactly, were the policymakers hoping that VISAR would do?

Caldwell could not see what the problem was. “If VISAR gains control, it can lock out all the couplers until we figure out a way of getting past Uttan’s defenses,” he told the others. “Then no more of these Ents will be able to get out, and there’ll be no risk of any invasion. Once we get into Uttan we dismantle the matrix, and the problem will be settled permanently.”

But Calazar, speaking with surprising firmness, vetoed such a pos­sibility. “The Ents may have their problematical side, but peculiar as their origins may seem to us, they are fully evolved intelligences in every respect, with all the rights which that implies,” he said. “How­ever the Entoverse came into existence, exist it does, and destroying it would amount to the genocide of its inhabitants. Thuriens could not permit that. It isn’t an option.”

Caidwell thought about it and decided that the Thuriens were right. He had, he admitted to himself, spoken too hastily. “Okay,” he agreed. “We can’t pull the plug. So, why don’t we simply discon­nect all the neurocouplers and let Jevlen have a different, VISAR-like system when the time comes to take them off probation? Or VISAR could be extended. That way, the Entoverse can continue to exist and carry on evolving internally any way it likes. We permanently quar­antine it.’’

But the Thuriens were not happy about that idea, either.

“Those are thinking, feeling beings, trapped in a hostile and peril­ous environment,” Calazar explained. “The hopes of many of them are pinned on the possibility of escape. To deny them that chance would be unethical and immoral. We couldn’t condone it.”

Caldwell accepted the mild rebuff gracefully. “Okay then,” he conceded patiently. “What do you want to do?”

“We don’t know.”

Caidwell drew a long, steady breath and reminded himself that he was dealing with the effective head of state of an alien civilization.

“Great,” he replied.

The flier sped over the countryside beyond the city at a modest altitude that Hunt judged to be three to four thousand feet. Occa­sional bleeps came from the front, with snatches of a synthetic voice that sounded like the flight-control computer. Scirio made and took a number of calls to others elsewhere over a handset, but otherwise nobody spoke.

Below, the heaped suburbs surrounding Shiban for several miles thinned out into the kind of clusters of urban collage and spatterings of buildings strung along roadways that looked much the same every­where, from Sumatra to New Jersey. Compared to typical developed areas on Earth there was less evidence of industry, which, following the Thurien practice, tended to be mostly underground. On the other hand, some constructions reached a scale of immensity that Earth had never seen. In one place the vehicle passed a straight, sheer-sided rift cut through a mountain range, packed with tangles of metallic geometry, the purpose of which Hunt was unable to guess. Farther on, they saw on the skyline an array of slender, pear-topped towers, interconnected by tubes, that must have stood a mile high.

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