“But it’s not the demons—it’s us!” Modra replied, puzzled.
“So they say. But who can believe demons in any case, and particularly here within their own domain and prison?”
Modra frowned and looked at Gun Roh Chin, seeing the longing in his eyes. “Not even you, Captain? You’re not bound by their vows.”
“I—well, it would make me uncomfortable to do so,” he explained hesitantly. “Also, there is the matter of my having stood here and watched the lot of you materialize things out of the floor. It is a bit startling.”
She suddenly remembered his position in all this. “You haven’t heard a thing, have you? This must look like the purest black magic to you.” She paused a moment, then added, “I guess it looks like that to me, too.”
“Merely a transformation of some of that energy into matter via thought command through devices set in the floor,” Tobrush commented. “Just like we control e-suits. No magic to it.”
Kalia snorted. “Yeah? And you can always conjure up just what you can think of, right? No big deal?”
“I will admit that the last half of the process isn’t one we have discovered how to do yet,” the Julki conceded. “On the other hand, I wonder about the true authenticity of these consumables. It isn’t enough to remember how something looks and tastes; all of these drinks are complex chemical compounds, most not found in nature. I do not know the complex molecular composition of my own drink, and I doubt if any of you know yours. The true question, then, is how the device knows. And, if it does not, what are we really drinking?”
Josef suddenly stopped drinking his wine, and stared at it, and others did the same. “Yes, what about that, Your Highnesses?”
<The basics are present^ one of the demons said, unruffled. <Wine is wine, beer is beer, stout is stout, fruit juice is fruit juice, and mulki is mulki. The basic chemistry and composition are known. Your minds supply the subjective points—taste, smell, color, consistency—which are easily compensated in the basic formulae. If it is good wine, and looks and tastes right, does it really matter if it is not chemically identical to the last detail? Does the vintner analyze the biochemistry of the grape, or does he taste the wine?>
“Plastonium,” Tobrush commented in an awed tone. “Who would ever believe it could really exist?”
“What?” Jimmy responded, frowning.
“Plastonium. It has many names, and that is the one we used. Computronium is another for it. For centuries, it’s been the single unit used in computer simulations—the element that can become any other element. The energy bleeds in from wherever that is outside this place, and becomes bound to physical law and thus becomes conventional matter or energy. It has to. But here, at the source of the bleed, there’s some kind of device, some filter with astonishing detail of knowledge, that’s able to influence that primal plasma and make it become whatever the operator—in this case, us—wishes. But what kind of computer could possibly know things like these drinks down to the atomic level? Such knowledge and power are almost a definition of a god.”
“Are you suggesting that the gods are some kind of computers?” Josef asked him, more curious than upset, unlike some others in the room.
“No. I am merely suggesting that their god might well be.”
That seemed to diffuse the tension a bit, particularly when the demon princes made no comment, but Jimmy decided to get back to practical matters and try and distance them from cosmology and back into pragmatism in a hurry.
“What about food?” Jimmy asked the demons, remembering their speculations. “Can’t this be made into food of any sort as well?”
<Life comes only from life,> another of the demons responded. <However, the process is able to synthesize food with the same look, taste, and texture of the original, and supplying the basic nutrients the body of the operator requires. Like the wine, it is not original, but it will do.>
“Then your people could feed themselves through this process,” Jimmy pressed.
<Indeed they could, > agreed the demons.
That was not the same, however, as saying that they did so, a distinction lost on some but not on others.
“You know, then, our deductions about you and your people, from our minds,” Jimmy said, wondering about their reaction to it.
<We have been with you since the transfer point,> one of the demons told them. < We have observed and heard all that went on. Our minds, our consciousnesses, are not bound like our bodies.>
“And I suppose you’re going to tell us how wrong we’ve been so far,” Modra put in.
<On the contrary, you have been remarkably astute, > a demon responded, surprising them.
“Then you admit to eating people alive!” Manya snapped triumphantly. “There! See? See what they are?”
<We are as much prisoners of our own biology as the rest of you, > a demon responded. <The natural food sources upon which we depended are mostly depleted or vanished utterly; synthetics can tide us over for a time, but only for a time. We fully understand how repugnant our requirements might be to you, but it is not something we have much choice about. Outside of this suspended state, we must have it from time to time or we will die. We attempt never to be indiscriminate. There are whole worlds, whole populations, which you know, which exist in such poverty and misery and hopelessness that death is a welcome release. Giving us life might well be considered the only thing that would give meaning to their miserable existences. The best, the brightest, the people who live their lives justifying their existence on their own, we touch only if they are our implacable enemies. We have no intent of destroying races and cultures, nor of uprooting and crushing civilizations. Like everyone else, we do what we must, but no more.>
<We wish no breeding farms,> another added. <We do not look upon the rest of life as game to be hunted. Look around you. See what we have built. Does it appear the work of savage monsters? Then look at the races which sprang from worlds we developed and helped to nurture. We took primitives who wandered as hunter-gatherers, too busy working to stay alive to ever develop, and brought them agriculture, and husbandry, and even architecture, politics, art, and invention. Your civilizations were built on our foundations. The galaxy is littered with ancient signs of races now extinct whom we did not get to in time, or who refused our contributions. If we must take, then we pay back for what we take. Far more people are alive today, living better, longer, happier lives because of us than the paltry percentage we must take. We are an ancient and civilized race. And if our payment still seems high, consider that the wars and governments and religions and prejudices of your own peoples have, over the ages, taken far more lives than we ever did, and for far less reasons. >
“Taking credit for an awful lot, aren’t you?” Jimmy McCray commented cynically. “And yet you’re the ones locked up.”
<We are locked away to save ourselves, as you surmised. It was either this, or the annihilation of our race. Yet we knew that one day our children would come for us.>
“I’m not exactly sure that’s why any of us wound up here,” Modra noted. “The only thing we saw when we arrived was the remnants of the most grisly and brutal carnage I can ever remember. It’s not a good image on which to base a trusting relationship.”
<The watchers chosen as sentinels on such posts were not, as you might expect, our best people. We did not know who, or what, might ever discover them. If our enemies had discovered them, they would have been destroyed. They were simply instructed that, in case of liberation, they learn as much as possible of their liberators, and then to use that knowledge to ensure that representatives of all three of the ancient empires assembled before the station was activated. Without that, none of you could have entered this temple. Unable to be specific, they were on their own. They selected a brutish, direct course of action, it is true, but it worked. It was necessary to be direct, we suspect, since we had to assemble you all and get you through and then deactivate the station before our main enemies could come. I can see from two of your minds that some there were what you call cymols. Those are in a direct sense extensions of those you call the Guardians. They had been fooled by a program within the station control that gave them information that the station was deactivated already, the watchers dead. They were not there to truly find out about us; they already knew. They were there to confirm that the station and its inhabitants were dead remnants, then cover it all up. The only reason they maintained the fiction of the project for so long was because the very existence of the station and the watchers was something they had never expected, and they needed to discover not only if it was still active, but whether it was an isolated thing or a possible prototyped
“But your people killed everybody*.” Modra pointed out. “Even the ship!”
<They could not allow the ship to leave, and there were other cymols aboard. We suspect they killed the others simply because, otherwise, there would have been much resistance when the ships of those you call the Mycohl and Mizlaplan showed up. It lacks subtlety, but they were doing what they had to do. In any event, more cymols would have come and most certainly killed all the researchers there in any case to prevent this from leaking out. >
“Our people don’t do that kind of thing!” Modra protested.
<Think not? Ask your companion. He has seen a cymol with its clever camouflage removed. He knows what they are really like, and, believe us in this, they are but pale shadows reflecting their masters. We submit ourselves for comparison with them.>
She turned. “Jimmy? What the hell are they talking about?”
He sighed. “I blocked it out selectively, not only from my own mind but from the Durquist’s. It was his request, really, if it was possible, to spare you, after we discovered that we all now were telepathic. It’s not—pleasant.”
“It’s about Tris, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Go ahead, I can take it.”
His memories flowed to her, and for a brief time she was back on the rain world again, this time seeing things from Jimmy’s own experiences, while she’d been a prisoner of the Mizlaplanians. Gun Roh Chin had felled the entire Exchange group with a wide stun shot, but hadn’t been able to keep Lankur down with it. He’d given the cymol a slightly stronger shot at close range to knock him out, and he’d done damage.
Tris Lankur suddenly sat up, then slowly got to his feet, but in a jerky, nonhuman way. In the suit, the impression of not a human being but a mechanical man was almost absolute.
“Well, I’ll be cursed!” swore the Durquist, staring. “He really is a robot!”
“I am directing biological interface manually,” said Lankur in that weird, mechanical voice. “I am functional, but direct linkage to biologically stored data not fully operable.”
“He got real problem,” Molly commented needlessly.
Jimmy couldn’t help but think of his nightmare and of the metallic, swelling brain of the pilot.
“Status reports on other units?” the cymol asked.
“We’re all right—I think,” Jimmy told him—it— whatever. “You’re the one that’s worse for wear.”
“Second shot produced some tissue damage and electrical linkage shorts,” the cymol explained. “Essential data intact, but am unable to access Terran simulation mode. Pre-cymol mode memories, habit patterns, not present.”
<Jeez! Lookit the way he moves!> Grysta commented. <He’s a real walking corpse now!>
Jimmy found the sight of the cymol stripped of his humanity to be very unsettling, but there were more pressing matters. “How functional overall are you?” he asked. “Can you make the distance? Can you fight if you have to and hit what you aim at?”
“Full control. Limits and reflexive actions impossible to predict, but no random or uncontrolled actions will occur. However, sensory and tactile feedback to brain is not functional at this time.”
“You mean you can’t feel pain?” McCray asked him.
“I mean I can feel nothing. But the biological unit appears to function as I direct.”
<Uh-oh!> Grysta commented. <Anybody bring any diapers? Otherwise he’s gonna get pretty ripe real soon!>
As usual, Jimmy ignored her. “Durquist?”
“It will have to do,” the Durquist responded. “It is particularly painful for me to see him in this condition, since I was with him for so long, but, from a practical sense, it’s far better than broken legs or puncture wounds or the like. What about our treacherous priests?”
Jimmy did a scan. “Ahead, of course. I think they made real time. Either that or we were out a lot longer than Grysta thinks we were. Still, I get the odd impression that they stopped somewhere ahead. If I were them, I’d want to get as far away from us as they could and as fast as possible.”
“Haste makes for mistakes,” the Durquist commented. “Let them stop and worry about us for a bit. Still, I would like to close and see if we can find some shelter from this interminable rain. How are you, by the way? From the angle, I’d say you got the full force of the first shot.”