She shrugged. “I was suddenly floating in this huge sea, or somethin’ like a sea, I guess. There was lots and lots of others around—not them dark creatures, neither. I can’t really explain it. Then, suddenly, this big darkness, like a kind of liquid creature, came up and they all scattered. I didn’t know where to scatter to, so I just tried to get outta its way but it stopped and then it talked to me. That was the scariest part. That thing was so powerful and so cold. I knew it was a god, but I also knew it didn’t give a shit about me and that it could just knock me into nothingness without even a thought. Instead, though, it talked. It talked deal.”
Chin nodded. “It offered you a real body, a new life—Molly’s life—if you would do what it told you to do.”
“Yeah! That’s it exactly! It told me almost a hundred percent correct what would happen. Just who the other two would be wasn’t real clear, but it wasn’t no surprise when I saw ’em. It said that, with you all in here, it could sort’a arrange things to happen, but it couldn’t make us spill blood on the big stone. It said I was to get the one that was dying to the stone while she was still alive and after the other one killed her I was to mix a little of Molly’s blood with hers and the dead-one’. If I did that, there was no other strings. I could keep the body and live a real, independent life. Feel things firsthand, see things firsthand, pick up and touch things, talk direct like I’m doin’ now. It said the body don’t get sick, don’t age, and might last centuries. Centuries! How could I tell it no? Particularly when I knew, really knew, that this thing, like, owned me at that point, that I was at its mercy unless I got out and did what it said.”
The captain nodded again. “It makes sense. They needed an entity with free will from the Exchange to complete the circuit, as it were. Molly wouldn’t do. There was nothing they could offer her.”
Jimmy McCray stared at Chin. “You think it’s possible that this really is Grysta? That somebody, anybody, could
have made it through? You didn’t see how narrow that passage was.”
“It was irrelevant. If this master of the Quintara is who or what you believe it is, then it is also the leader of whatever lives within that other plane. It could simply have ordered that she come through.”
“But how could it have known that everything would take place here as it did?”
“You’re too naive for this work. We were manipulated. Even imprisoned, the first set of demons we encountered were incredibly powerful. My late comrade and friend Morok would have understood, and Josef, there, as well. The Quintara are telepathic beyond your powers to withstand; they are empathic in both directions to a degree that they could overwhelm and manipulate other empaths. We are conditioned against multiple talents, but you have them yourself now. The ordination and binding of priests in the Mizlaplan is done with a hypnotic power that is so strong it overwhelms any of us. We were manipulated, probably by those first two demons whose tracks started us on this path. Put through a series of tests and trials to determine the best combination for success. We were so busy fighting each other we hardly noticed or gave it a thought. All to winnow out those who might interfere, and those who were unnecessary, to hone us and the odds in their favor.”
<So many variables’^ Tobrush objected. <It’s not possible !>
Jimmy McCray sighed. “Not possible for Mi, perhaps, but there is a good reason for all our ancient beliefs and rituals and practices, and we have a word for them: diabolical.”
“What minds they must have!” Modra exclaimed.
“Indeed,” Chin agreed. “Imagine agreeing when caught with the knives in their hands to being locked away for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of years, until you feel your enemies have weakened and even true belief in you, let alone knowledge of some of their limitations, has died out. It’s a monstrous, fiendish plot worthy of their reputation. An entire race, willing to suspend their civilization, their very lives, until they have outlived their enemies. Still, they missed their mark. Descendants, at least, of those ancient enemies still live and rule, and not all the ancient knowledge is lost because the empires have grown so enormous that native cultures in many cases, particularly in the Exchange, remain well preserved. Perhaps that was the plan. The Exchange preserved the ancient cultures; the Mizlaplan created a bulwark, a holy overculture who knew the enemy and would raise the alarm in unison should that enemy reappear, while the Mycohl could provide the shock troops as hardened and fierce as the Quintara themselves.” He sighed. “Come—let’s use this mechanism to feed ourselves and quench our thirst. Then it will be time to explore options.”
The system did work, delighting Grysta, but when they tried it for anything other than sustenance it ignored them, as the demon prince had said. In a way, Gun Roh Chin felt reassured by that. “It’s just a machine after all,” he told them.
Modra went over to Krisha, who had been uncharacteristically silent during this ordeal. The priestess looked wan and shaken, even a bit frightened. They all had that fear, but this was unusual in the normally self-assured young woman.
“It’s taking its toll on all of us,” Modra said sympathetically.
“No, it’s not that. They can see into the darkest comers of your mind, where even we do not look within ourselves. That is the heart of their power. That prince, when he spoke of me, allowed me and me alone to see a vision of what he had in mind for me.”
“Yeah, they’re good at scaring you.”
“I saw myself on my native world, only then under their rule. Dirty, naked as now, like some animal, yet protected from harm by others by some sign burned into my forehead. Consumed with lusts yet bound absolutely by my vows, rooting in the garbage for food, unable to control my bowels and thus condemned to filth, my talent turned so that all could hear my innermost thoughts yet I could hear none of theirs, an object lesson to others, scorned and derided by all who came upon me. Never growing old, never getting sick, never even allowed the luxury of madness.” She shivered. “And knowing in that vision—absolutely knowing—that he could do all that to me any time he chose.”
Modra gave her a sympathetic hug. “That’s the way they think, and the way they get you to freely obey their every whim. They get a charge out of it. They see us only as food, pets, and toys.” She thought a moment. “That mark that would protect you—can you remember what it looked like? If it’s for real it might give us safe conduct out of here.”
Krisha shook her head from side to side. “No. I knew it was there, of course, but the brief vision was from my point of view. Because it was on my forehead, I think, I could not see it.”
Modra sighed. “Too bad. It would have been a handy thing to know.”
Gun Roh Chin drew very close to Jimmy McCray. The little man was watching Molly—or Grysta, or whoever it was—eat with such wonderment that it seemed almost unreal. If it was Grysta, it would be the first time she’d ever tasted anything in the conventional sense.
“Well? Is it Grysta and only Grysta or not?” Chin whispered to him.
“I don’t know,” Jimmy answered in the same low tone. “She sure acts like Grysta would act, and she talks a good line. But—who can tell? Molly’s brain was designed with limits, but this one seems to have none that we ourselves don’t share. Could they have actually reworked the body, even the brain, inside?” v-
“They could,” the captain told him. “The body was totally within the energy field and the adjustments would probably be rather minor. Since the body was synthetic anyway, it was probably easy for such a computer as this to analyze. The real question is the one Tobrush poses—if indeed that is Grysta in there, it implies something enormous. That not only our essences, our souls, survive the death of the body, but our consciousness, even our personalities, as well. At least a power that could read out, capture, hold, and reinsert that at will.”
Jimmy McCray stared at the captain, bemused. “You represent a theocracy and you don’t believe in the soul?”
“Not like that. Not as a unitary, unchanged consciousness as if in the body.”
“Oh, yes—that’s right. Yours is a reincarnation for perfection and punishment system. That, however, doesn’t allow for deals with the devil. If that’s not Grysta, it’s an impervious imitation.”
“Would you bet your life, and perhaps your immortal soul if it truly exists, on that?”
McCray was suddenly interested. “Why? What do you have in mind?”
“We need a station. If there is one here in the same sense as the others, it’ll be closed to us and certainly guarded by demons who don’t need our help. That means going back up through the garden, which, I think, isn’t something we are all likely to survive considering the price paid to get in here in the first place and eventually facing us with the same problem of the liberated guards.”
“It’s academic anyway. Even without the problem of the fire level and the wall-to-wall demon horde in the switching station, we’d have no food, nothing to sustain us. Impossible.”
“I’m not at all certain we have to retrace our steps. However, we would certainly have to get past the demigods in the garden. The first gate I’m not sure is relevant—those guards were a projection. The important thing would be getting back to that cavern of the crystals. As I say, unlikely that we’d get that far, but it’s a last-ditch attempt. That leaves the other, even riskier idea.”
“Yes?”
“If that is your Grysta, and she got in, maybe some could get out the same way.”
“By dying? We weren’t talking bodies by that route, you know.”
“I said it was risky.”
“It’s suicide!”
“Remaining here is worse than that.”
Modra came over and joined them. “That big bastard really screwed up Krisha. Damn! They know how to get to you, don’t they?”
Jimmy nodded. “They’ve kept in practice through surrogates over the years. I think that, even imprisoned, they could be summoned by their cults and the stupid via the mental dimension. It explains a lot. Uh—the captain here has been proposing that we all jump into that big pool of nothing out there and see what happens.”
“It may come to that,” she admitted. “Still, Krisha’s vision had her under a terrible curse, wandering around naked, yet with some mark on her forehead that told everyone instantly to leave her alone. She doesn’t know what the mark was, but if we could find out . . .”
Gun Roh Chin brightened. “Yes! A safe conduct! But— he never showed her what the mark was?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, no.”
Jimmy McCray thought a moment. “I might have an idea, but the only way to test it out would be for someone to actually try it in harm’s way, and, if I’m wrong, it’s curtains. Hell, I might even be right and still blow it.”
They were interested. “Go ahead.”
“The Number of the Beast—three sixes. But that was written in the second century after Christ, and probably in Greek. I seriously doubt that it’s a real number at this point. More likely a symbol, possibly in the written Quintara script. Something that looked like three sixes to a second-century monk writing in Greek. It might have been expressed in Hebrew, since he was a religious writer, or Roman, although that seems pretty awkward, or even Aramaic, of which I know next to nothing.”
“Tris would have known Aramaic,” Modra commented softly. “It was his native tongue.”
Jimmy didn’t even hear. “Too early for the Arabic system, which would be the easiest. . . .”He sighed. “Damn it, we need some sample of the Quintara alphabet! Then I could compare whatever squiggles they use to the numbering systems known to a second-century Christian mystic!”
Modra was excited. “We don’t know how much time we’ve got, but we’ve got a whole damned city here. Somewhere here somebody must have built a statue to somebody or stuck inscriptions around.”
The others were all crowded around now, interested in doing something, anything, rather than just sitting and waiting.
“It’s better than sitting here,” Josef commented. “The problem is, I know nothing of any of those tongues.”
<You are too anxious,> Tobrush cautioned. <What difference can it make? There is no station here, and to get back to a true station would mean going back through the water world without provisions and the fire world without environment suits, and in any case it wouldn’t fool the Quintara or any other telepath.>
Modra told the captain what was said, and he nodded. “True enough, but it might be an automatic system. If you were one of the Quintara, and you’d been imprisoned, half-alive, for countless centuries, would you stick around if you were freed? That first station was essentially automated. I think they all are. Ask yourself why such a telepathic race should even need a mark of safety for its people. The only logical answer is to allow them free use of automated equipment. And don’t be so certain there’s no station here. If they’ve gone, they’ve gone by a route we, too, can use. For all their power, the Quintara are flesh and blood, as we are. The odds are they even need toilets, although we haven’t seen one as yet. Those stations are there for them. They need them.”
“He’s right!” Modra cried, feeling sudden hope. “If we can just find the mark. …”
“And if they are truly gone from the city,” Jimmy added.
“Let’s go see,” the captain replied.
They all walked back outside, feeling as they exited a certain relief at open air, however static, after the pyramid’s close and dangerous theatrics.