<It is no practical solution no matter how satisfying, > Tobrush told him. <What can we do? Multiply into the hosts of the entire empire? To do so would mean the death of the empire itself, and would make us no less targets. We can nibble at them, give them fear, make them pause, but if we must take on each of them one-on-ont, the future is grotesque and by no means certain. We are only one part of the defense, inadequate by ourselves. All three of the Higher Races beat them the last time, and all three must take them on again. The implication of that dark, other-plane mass at the demon core is also unpleasant. It means that their bodies, their solid universe selves, are but mobile shells isolating the real enemy from the properties of our universe and giving it an interface, as it were, to work here, in the same way as the others Over There used the idols. It may explain why they were imprisoned in their bodies instead of destroyed before. They might not be able to be destroyed. >
“Cheery thought,” Jimmy McCray responded.
“Jimmy—better take a look at Krisha,” Modra put in. “Something’s really wrong.”
The little man went over to the Mizlaplanian woman and knelt down. Krisha was awake, but unmoving, blankly staring at a point beyond sight. He tried a telepathic probe but recoiled after a moment.
Her mind was a mess, an endless loop of paradox and despair:
</ have succumbed to the ultimate evil and must destroy myself yet if I destroy myself I betray all those living in the known universe yet I have succumbed to evil and I must . . . >
He looked over at the Julki. “Tobrush? She’s gone catatonic. Under some compulsion to commit suicide because she broke, even though anybody can be broken. The compulsion’s near absolute, but her rational self knows that, if she does it, she cuts the only one we have who can get to one of the Angels.”
“A hypno conundrum,” Josef added, nodding. “I’ve seen it before. The Mizzie Angel’s hypno is too strong for anybody to resist or clean it out. If she comes out of it, she’ll die. Since she has an equal moral obligation to stay alive, she’s staying out and looped. That’s a job for a psych, a specialist, and one with the power to unravel that compulsion.”
<We must have her,> Tobrush noted. <And we can’t stay here in this antechamber too long or someone’s bound to start searching, either when they find that mess outside or when the creature communicates through the other plane to ones still here. McCray, stand over there with Stryke and Josef and help them block as much as possible. If only one Angel did this, I may be able to match its power, but I don’t want any of what I do leaking over to you.>
Tobrush glided over to the catatonic priestess while the others, including Grysta, got as far back against the other wall as they could and braced themselves.
Even so, the blast of power from Tobrush’s mind almost knocked them cold. Just when they felt they couldn’t stand it any more, it stopped.
<Tricky. You were correct, Josef. I am no psychiatrist, and I wish I had one iota of the knowledge and wisdom you and the others believe I have. It is no trick to remove the compulsion. It is not terribly strong, just strong enough. The problem is also cultural. Merely removing the hypnotic shell would not solve the problem, since she was raised to think in these terms. In this case, it is easier to erase the failures.>
“Of course!” Josef said, snapping his fingers. “Erase the memory of her breaking!”
<It is not as easy as your parlor trick mentality believes, > Tobrush told him. <A command to just forget it wouldn’t work. Her psyche is too deeply wounded. Having her forget conscious memories would not be sufficient to save her. This is made more difficult” because I do not understand the human psyche. I am going to have to guess at this. It may work, or not, and it may produce unpredictable results, either immediately or later. >
“Do your best,” Jimmy told the creature. “Do it now.”
<Indeed. Brace yourselves.>
It wasn’t as bad this time, but much of what Tobrush was doing bled out to them. At the heart of the problem was the ordination itself, the original set of hypnotic commands the Mizlaplanian Angel had given her years before. The memories of that, of her terror, at being forced into that great room, flashed before them. As the string entered her mind, at that very point when the frightened teen-age girl was made a priestess, Tobrush began to work, slowly removing the permanence and replacing it with a different image, one that was almost diabolically clever.
The ordination had worn off over time. Worn off, and, when she again was in the presence of the Holy Ones, was not replaced, could not be re-implanted. She realized that now. Realized that she’d been conditioned by her training and by her frequent inquisitorial examinations to shunt that knowledge from her conscious mind, creating a false persona, a shell, that protected her by believing her ordination was true and binding. . . .
Satisfied, Tobrush moved to the immediate past, pushing back, unraveling the threads that had led to her breaking before the demonic onslaught. That pit, those terrors, they were Krisha the Priestess’s terrors, and when the priestess shell had shattered, her true self which had always been there remained. That priestess, the dominant personality, had weakened, succumbed, and been destroyed. The Holy Laws of Ordination had been obeyed. The saint had died, but her true self had not. Now it was free, free to admit that it existed, free of holy obligation. . ^ .
They watched as animation, life, returned to her body. First her eyes fluttered, then she shook her head, and began taking a lot of deep breaths. Then her head snapped back and her mouth opened wide, as if in sudden shock, and her hands began to feel all over her body, including those parts forbidden to be touched in those ways. She had the expression of a delighted child with a wonderful new toy, and it went on for perhaps a minute or two. Suddenly she
stopped, froze, and looked up at them. Her appearance, just the way she moved, seemed so different that before she spoke a word she seemed to them all to be almost possessed in the way Molly had been, a completely different person in Krisha’s body. Her shield was down, her mind as open as one without any talent at all, but it was still too groggy and disorganized to tell much.
She pointed. “You—you’re . . . Modra. Right? And you’re Jimmy, and you’re Tobrush, and you, you’re . . . Josef.”
Modra went over to her. Krisha seemed so different, so … childlike, almost. “That’s right,” the Exchange woman said gently. “And do you remember who you are?”
For a moment it seemed as if she didn’t understand the question. Finally she said, “I’m Krish. Krish Mendoro.” She frowned. “Aren’t I?”
“We hope so,” the other woman responded. “Uh—do you remember anything about the past, about how you got here?”
Krisha frowned even harder. “I have most of her memories. I know where I am.” She looked up at them. “The captain?”
Modra shook her head. “Still nothing. Come—we must get out of here. We still aren’t home free by any stretch of the imagination.”
Krisha allowed Modra to help her to her feet, but she was still not at all herself. She was speaking in a thick and common dialect of her native world, and thinking in that tongue, too. As an experienced telepath, Modra had been able to pick the correct words from Krisha’s mind for the reply, but clearly her pronunciation, and, perhaps, grammar, were pretty far off as well, which is why it took a little time for Krisha to figure out what Modra was saying.
<Use your talent,> Modra shot to her. <Relearn what you need.>
Krisha’s mind, however, showed that she hadn’t heard a thing.
<She’s lost her talent!> Jimmy McCray exclaimed.
<She’s lost all of them, old and new,> Modra agreed. <I thought that was impossible. A genetic trait!>
<It is possibly psychosomatic,> Tobrush suggested. <Such trauma can cause all sorts of things. I have seen people with perfectly good eyes who were nonetheless blind, for example. She has hated her talent for getting her into the bind she was in. So long as she is not telepathic, it can’t bind her again. It is the obvious answer, but I am getting literally nothing in feedback from her. I have known talents to be lost or, more frequently, become intermittent because of head injury, for example, and it is impossible to damage the area in other ways. I can but wonder if I did not burn it out when I worked on her. >
“You’re all so quiet,” Krisha noted. “You’re talking with your thoughts, aren’t you? I used to be able to do that, too. Why can’t I?”
“We don’t know,” Modra told her. “It might come back. Do you want it to come back?”
“Oh, yes! It’s so—quiet. So lonely. I don’t like it at all! Every one of you can read me, right? Deep, too! But I’m cut off!”
“We have to go,” Jimmy McCray said sympathetically. A born telepath himself, he couldn’t imagine suddenly having no thoughts but his own and no blocking abilities, either. “Just stick close to us and let’s see if we can get out of here. If we can’t, it won’t make any difference, will it?”
She stopped short. “Oh, yeah. I hadn’t thought of that.”
The station was laid out like all the rest, with an entry cavern, a narrowing, and then an opening into a central area. Clearly demons had been in suspension here, as in most of the others, but they were gone—possibly among the ones now restarting the city.
“Everyone!” Modra said aloud, for Krisha’s benefit. “We want to go back to where we first entered this horrible place! Clear your minds! Pretend that you are sending your thoughts to the crystal, maybe focus on the center, there, where the demons were. Picture the place in your mind and tell it that that place is where you want to go!” She didn’t add any cautions, for fear of putting other thoughts in their minds.
Think about the first place. . . . Think about the vision
of the world, of the crystal, inside and out. Think of that place. …
The walls began to take on a strange quality; features seemed to be revealed in the smooth-faced facets of the crystal interior, features that looked almost like . . . like a living creature, whose tissue was seen under a high-powered microscope. There seemed to be veins, arteries, fluids moving along and between them. It was a fascinating if unnerving sight.
“Walk on through!” Modra said, nervously, softly, not sure what was coming.
They walked together, crossing the great room and exiting through the far narrow corridor, then emerged into the expected antechamber.
“The walls—whatever that was, it’s gone now,” Jimmy noted.
<Fascinating, > Tobrush commented. <Could the crystal actually be a form of life? After so many, this is still most unexpected. >
“Never mind the scientific detachment,” Josef growled. “Are you all here?”
They looked around. Everyone, even Grysta, was through.
“Okay, then,” he said, satisfied. “Shall we see where we are? I halfway expect to walk back out into that damned station again!”
“There’s no cable or walkway,” Jimmy noted. “I don’t think this is where we wanted to go.” He sighed. “Well, there’s the exit. Let’s all get disappointed together.”
They walked through the energy barrier and were relieved to see a bright landscape before them, warm and green. It was almost a paradise-like environment, at least for the Terrans, but there was no sign of any structures, nor any indication that structures had ever existed here.
Jimmy McCray sighed. “As pretty as ancient Ireland was ever said to be, only warmer, thank God.”
“But it’s not where we wanted to go,” Modra noted.
Jimmy sighed. “No, it’s not. Either we didn’t tune the thing right, or know the secret passwords, or something, but clearly the old captain was wrong on this one. We’re out of Hell, all right, and that alone makes us better off, but we’re still a long, long way from home.”
EXIT, STAGE RIGHT
IT WAS THEIR THIRD NIGHT ON THE NEW WORLD, and time for reflection.
The air was sweet and normal, with considerably more oxygen than they were used to, giving them all a slight feeling of light-headedness which they were now getting over, but, although it hadn’t rained, the very high humidity that felt like a thick blanket made the danger of fire minimal.
The water tasted high in minerals but it was good water, and Tobrush provided needed confirmation of some of the plants by showing that a Julki was not just a biological chemical synthesizer but a natural analyst as well. By ingesting a tiny part of organic matter through two hollow tendrils and sticking it somewhere in a compartment inside its body, it was able to give a basic breakdown of what was in the things and at least a guess as to what was or wasn’t edible. None of it tasted like much, but much of it was edible by the Terrans and it at least allowed them to fill their bellies.
As for Tobrush, it found some ugly creepy-crawlies in the woods, metallic blue in color, with cauliflower-like bodies and masses of feelers that kind of slid along the forest floor and clung to the trees, and discovered that they were acceptable to the Julki constitution, although the Terrans were cautioned not to try them—as if any of them had any such inclinations after looking at one of the things.
The food, or water, or whatever had, however, given all the Terrans bad gas and diarrhea, which seemed not serious or life-threatening but definitely had kept them from considering other options for a while. Now, however, it seemed to have finally eased up as their systems adjusted to the unfamiliar but chemically correct food.
Josef had tended to distance himself from his old companion and comrade; the fact that Tobrush was one of the Hidden Ones wasn’t easy to take, and Josef shared the fear of all citizens of the Mycohl that a Hidden One could, at any time, inject anyone of any race with its microbial self and take over the body. The fact that Tobrush still talked and acted like Tobrush was no comfort; none of them harbored any doubt that they were reading only the natural actor’s persona the Mycohl master wanted them to have, and that, underneath and untouchable by such as they, was a totally different, totally alien presence.
Jimmy felt that as well. He’d seen likable Tris Lankur, a regular fellow and pilot, unmasked as something inexplicable and inhuman already. He had no desire to get below the Mycohlian’s surface, but he had no illusions about how that totally different parasitic life form really regarded them. Certainly not as equals; rather, most likely, as intelligent and useful pets, in the way a hunter regarded his dogs.
This was a representative of a life form as ancient and as powerful as the Quintara, and the empire its people had created was, at least to those of the other empires, rather demon-like itself.