“Cure the crime,” insisted the red voice. “Deal with the criminals with the full rigor of the Consensus, for the will of the Consensus is the law of the universe—”
“For all the universe except Northworld,” resumed blue. “That world does not recognize the Consensus, nor do the Lomeri—”
“The Lomeri who were lizards and who have been dust,” rasped the orange voice, “for a thousand millennia before there were men. And before the Lomeri there were other settlements, we are sure of it—”
“The Consensus is sure,” whispered violet, “though that past is a far past even for the Consensus.”
“Far even for us. . . .” the voices of color murmured in unison.
Hansen felt the chamber shiver like a sigh. His feet were becoming cold, and it was not merely his imagination that the membrane around him sagged. It was voiding the carbon dioxide Hansen exhaled without a corresponding influx of oxygen.
“This isn’t my job,” Hansen said. “I don’t—”
He paused. He was at the center of a glowing ambiance that continued to expand indefinitely, like the ball of plasma generated by a nuclear weapon between the stars.
“Send a fleet, s-sirs,” he continued, afraid to choose a term for the entities which spoke here with him. “I’m a man, a cop. I don’t find planets. You need a—”
“There was a fleet,” said a voice as scales of light shimmered away from the brown/mauve stalagmite. “A fleet and a fleet—”
“—and a fleet,” echoed the pink voice. “Humans in the first fleet, and they vanished—”
“Though drones,” said blue, “had penetrated the area where Northworld should have been, and the drones reported nothing. Therefore we sent—”
“The Consensus sent a second fleet,” said the red voice, “crewed by androids and ready to destroy anything it met in the dead zone, the region—”
“The region that had flouted our majesty, our Consensus,” resumed the violet voice. “And when the androids vanished without warning, without report, we sent a third fleet that was a great machine in itself but which lived and thought, though—”
“Though not as men think, and not part of the Consensus,” chuckled the yellow voice. “And it vanished, Commissioner Hansen, as though it had never been . . . and though machines that are no more than machines ignore the area and pass through it.”
Hansen felt the pressure of thoughts, of words, all around him. The airsuit was no protection. His whole body was becoming numb.
“Fleets have failed,” said the red light, “so we are sending you. We will arm you, Commissioner Hansen—”
“But the fleets were armed,” shivered tones of deep green light. “You will be alone, so you may penetrate the defenses unnoticed—”
“Penetrate the mystery . . . ,” brown/mauve murmured.
“You are the best for the task,” boomed all the colors together. “On all the planets of the Consensus, in all the Consensus.”
You are resourceful/Commissioner Hansen is resourceful/The Kommissar is resourceful, rasped/purred/said the voices pounding Hansen’s mind.
And then, in a single thought so smooth and steely that it could have been Hansen’s own—and perhaps it was Hansen’s own thought—
“Commissioner Nils Hansen will execute the will of the Consensus. . . .”
Chapter Four
The light through the varied crystalline roofplanes was brilliant without being dazzling. Some of the score of figures seated around the walls used the rays to ornament themselves; others formed the light into shrouds and hulked as shadows within opalescent beauty that hid their features better than darkness could have done.
North sat in the high seat and glowered at his peers. His left eye didn’t track with his right; there were limits to power, even North’s power, and the freezing paths of the Matrix had exacted a price as he learned them.
“This latest probe by the outsiders doesn’t matter,” said Rolls from his place near the doorway. He was almost as tall as North and enough heavier than the man in the high seat to look soft . . . until one looked more closely. “Any of us can take care of that—”
“My pleasure,” said Rao. A smile of anticipation licked over his broad, dark face.
The curtain of light beside Rao rinsed away for a moment as Ngoya reached over to stroke her husband’s thick wrist and silence him. Rao wasn’t interested in—wasn’t capable of understanding—what Rolls and many others of the team regarded as major issues. Ngoya was often embarrassed for her husband, since she in turn failed to see that Rao’s single-minded simplicity was also his greatest strength.