They tried to shut the comments out, but only Krisha had success, and that of a limited sort, once they were within line of sight of an idol.
<Would you know your gods if you encountered them? How can you know that we are not your gods? Give yourselves to us, and we will reward you and keep you safe. Can your gods do that?>
To the Mycohlians, they said, <,The Quintara are respected still among the Mycohl; yet the Quintara come from us and serve us. The Princes of the Quintara are but we in fleshly form. If your leaders still venerate us, if your Lords still worship us, why do you hesitate to serve us, who can bring you power beyond your dreams and raise you even above the Lords of the Qaamil?>
To the pair left from the Exchange, they had more specific offers, as befitted the individualistic nature of the society that produced them.
<All of your friends are dead,> they reminded Modra. <You are alone, naked, cut off from even the universe that bore you. You have nothing to go back to. Yet though your friends be dead, they are not gone. They are here, with us. All that is dear to you is here; the team of old can be together again, united, like old times, but in our service. Just prostrate yourself before us, give yourself to us, worship us, and all these things you shall have forever. >
And Jimmy heard, <You do not need to despair; all religions lead here, and all that you have heard is true. Heaven and Hell are the same place, really; it is merely a question of whether one looks down from wealth and peace and luxury into the Lake of Fire, or whether one is in the lake enviously looking up at what he cannot ever share. It is too late when you are dead, as you certainly soon shall be, and you cannot run from the decision any longer. Evil is merely a tool for the perfection of the saints, nothing more. The Quintara are as much a part of God’s plan as the angels, and all do His bidding. Sacrifice is not noble; it is a stupid waste of the gift of life you were given. You could be the new Pope, unifying all races and nationalities and religions. Look about you. The light comes not from above but from within. You could be the one who takes the truth to all peoples and lights them all from within. There is no good, there is no evil; there is only power, and the wisdom to use it properly. >
They tried threats as well as promises.
<What have you to lose?> they asked. <Join with us, or, eventually, we will tire of this game, and spread confusion in your minds, and scatter you among the worlds, so that each of you shall walk, naked and alone, forever. >
The Entity certainly knew them; threats of eternal boiling in hot liquid fire, or endless flaying alive, and other threats more to be expected were occasionally used, accompanied by an empathic tone of sheer menace, but it was that threat of being forever alone and defenseless, wandering without end, accompanied by a terribly cold undertone, that struck the real chord in almost all of them and was the one most used with increasingly graphic variations.
<You have seen us and felt us in the other plane,> the entities reminded them, <and you know that there is no way to the city except through us. Not there, not here. You will voluntarily become our new vanguard, or you will be caught and all that we have promised will be done unto you. This time there is no escape, no other way out. >
Krisha gave as much of a running vocalization of the entities’ commentary to the captain as she could, omitting those words and graphic descriptions she could not bring herself to utter. Still, he had no trouble filling in the blanks, probably in some cases worse than the real words came out.
“Not a one of them has offered me a case of natural leaf cigars,” he noted wryly. “No imagination, I suspect; just the same old stuff we expect.”
“Do you really think that the Quintara are their servants?” she asked him.
“Somehow I doubt it,” he responded. “My logic tells me more and more that the Quintara are opportunists, no more. Remember that one cube we looked at? The commentary basically said that the demons were carbon-based life; carnivores, certainly, but no more than Savin and his Mesok people were. In fact, no matter how different they look, and no matter how oddly the evolution twisted them externally, in the essential areas I’d guess there isn’t a whisker’s difference physiologically between the Quintara and the Mesok. I think that the Quintara are simply much older as a race, perhaps from a galaxy much further in towards the universal center than ours. I think they stumbled onto the other plane and the things it could do to most minds exposed to it and they became so powerful they mistook themselves for gods. Certainly they adopted the entities’ attitudes, but, being of the flesh, they were in a far better position to indulge themselves. They might have deals with these entities, but I don’t think they take their orders from them. No, the real mystery is how the Quintara got themselves locked away like that. The way is easy enough to surmise, but the how and the who are still missing. That and why they were imprisoned, not destroyed.”
“They were imprisoned by the gods, and held here so that they could be loosed against the transgressors if they turned away from the True Faith,” Manya insisted. “It is consistent with infallible Holy Scripture and teachings.”
He didn’t respond, not because he didn’t have a response, but because that response would mark him forever as a blasphemer. What, after all, were all the gods of the Mizlaplan, or anybody else’s gods, but creatures of another plane whose powers were at or near absolute upon lower orders? Who ran the universe for their amusement or their edification, the way scientists ran animals in experiments. They defined good and evil, and they set the rules. Theologically, “good” was doing the will of the gods, and “evil” was to go against that will. And, if you were good enough, you got a great big piece of cheese.
Not just Manya, but probably Morok and Krisha as well, would never be able to understand how someone with that sort of attitude could still be a loyal citizen of the Mizlaplan and its theocracy.
Zig, zag, cut in, cut out, through this way, back that. . . . It was a wonder that none of them had yet run into one another. And, with so much sameness, it was also just about impossible to tell one group’s relative position from another. Finally, it was Gun Roh Chin who suggested. “We can be wandering in here indefinitely, or at least for a very long time, and there are not even any temporal clues. We need a rest—bad. And, so do the others.”
“What are you suggesting, Captain?” Morok asked, knowing that it was the truth.
“A truce. We’re all in contact. Everybody finds the nearest place out of sight of one of those monstrosities and settles down and gets some sleep. If you are as wide open as you say, and they are, too, nobody can pull a fast one on anyone else without us knowing. We’re all filthy, and we can’t do much about that. But we’re also dead on our feet. If there is no advantage to anyone, just a freeze in place, what’s the cost? It’s really now or never, too, since the number of spaces free of idolatrous influence are growing fewer and fewer. What if this is the last such space?”
<We’ll accept if the other two go along,> Jimmy McCray sent back wearily.
Josef nodded to himself and sent, <This is no longer an endurance contest. We’ve all proven that we’re pretty well dead even as well-trained and disciplined representatives of our respective peoples. It seems stupid not to stop. Otherwise we’ll collapse before we start and only these things will win.>
Morok looked around. “Well?”
“They’re right,” Krisha told him. “If we go much more I’m going to walk right into the clutches of one of those things without even seeing or sensing it.”
“If they are massed at the end, as they were in that other place, then we shall need all our wits,” Manya said flatly. “We do not serve the gods by reaching the end and then being unable to act. Let us rest.”
<We stop in place, then, until the first team decides to move on,> Morok sent to all.
<Agreed,> Jimmy responded.
<Agreed,> added Josef.
Each of the groups found a spot near water and away from any proximity to an idol. Gun Roh Chin found it interesting that not a single one of them had raised an objection—not the Mycohl, not Manya. It wasn’t just that they were all exhausted, although that was a factor, certainly. He suspected that, in one way at least, this new unblocked openness had created some de facto mutual respect between the teams. It was difficult to maintain an image of the Mycohl as a group of fanatical devil-worshipers when you could read their thoughts and discover that they weren’t all that different than your own. Manya had apparently even stopped trying to convert the rest.
Krisha came over and sank down beside him. He almost wished she hadn’t, since it was very, very hard on him to see her this close, knowing that all of his illusions about what was under that robe were confirmed, and control himself, and without his pants on it was nearly impossible to disguise such feelings without a lot of self-control.
“Thank you once again, Captain,” she said warmly. “None of them could offer a truce of this sort. There would be too much pride involved and too much loss of face. We would not have gotten this far without you.”
“You will have to live without me at some point,” he told her flatly, trying not to look directly at her but instead staring at the opposite hedgerow. The only way to avoid his own lusts was to talk, and talk about anything else, until at least one of them was asleep.
“What do you mean?”
“There may yet be a way out of this for you. For most of us, perhaps, although I can’t say for sure. I don’t believe that there is any way out-for me.”
“What . . . ? Don’t talk like that!”
He sighed. “Krisha, for the first time, my total absence of sensitivity, either way, to the powers the rest of you have is a massive liability. This—all of this—is based on it. It’s the key. We may be facing a flesh and blood enemy, but the fight is not and will not be on a flesh and blood basis. That has been mostly reserved for us killing one another, or trying to. There were more Quintara in that holding chamber or whatever it was way back there than would be needed to conquer whole solar systems. How many more did we not see? Millions? Billions? More?”
“I—I don’t see what that has to do with you.”
“I am a blind man merely in this maze. If we get to the city, and some of us will, I’m sure, and if that city is laid out much like the city you saw in your visions in the crystal cave, how do you get out? Not this way. Even if you could retrace, we have no supplies, no water, and no e-suits. The fire world alone would kill us in minutes, and in any case the trails that were so easy to spot with all our instruments, scanners, magnifiers, and the rest would be nearly impossible to locate in the reverse direction without them. I don’t think the Quintara can and do go through those levels, either.”
“What? But we saw their tracks and trails!”
“And not a single thing for a carnivore to eat. Nothing. And no real tracks after that first level, either. Nor would a race that can do all this have levels where you had to walk for two or three days between.”
“Then why have trails at all?”
“So that anyone who was there for some reason could find a station. Possibly even so that work crews that were not Quintara, but were instead their slaves or whatever, and who couldn’t do what they can do, could move from one level to another. I’m not even certain that they are worlds, not without seasons, without nights and days, and with so constricting a region. More likely some are production regions—such as for growing the crystals, or pouring building blocks, or whatever. Some may even be templates, built just to test them out, see where the flaws are, and the like. I’m not even certain that the drawings on the cave walls we saw were real, or if they were just some Quintara’s power fantasy or sick joke. I don’t even think we’re in our universe at all, but outside the bubble, on its edge, in some half-zone.”
“But those are stars up there,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but are they real or merely projections? Or are we looking in from the edge? What was beyond the city when you saw it in your vision?”
She frowned. “It’s so hard to remember just what we saw. It gets very confusing very fast. The best my mind comes up with is nothing, and that’s not possible. Not even empty space. A total nothing. No mind can conceive of absolutely nothing.”
“Our minds can’t,” he replied. “That doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Look at the plane you visited with your mind and soul. But, I’m afraid, that’s the way out. If there is any way out, that’s the way. All of you will have to return to that place, wherever and whatever it is. You’ll need a station, of course, but unless I miss my guess, there’s a station in that city, perhaps a master station. Some sort of Quintara equivalent of a computer controls them, not those frozen demons, although if you don’t work it, they can. How it’s done I can’t guess. Perhaps you must tune your mind to the specific giant crystal. Once inside, you must stay inside as long as you can. The longer you are there, the greater the mutation, the more power from it that you can tap. You must become as powerful as the Quintara—as the Quintara leaders, not merely the common soldiers we’ve encountered so far. And, when you do, you must go to the Holy Angels
and tell them everything. Someone must also do the same for the Mycohl and even the Guardians, if they still exist, You must show them that the Quintara are breaking free once more, and get their help, since there are far too few of us to take on an entire race.”
“But, dear Captain, why won’t you be there, too, if you are right? With all our powers; we haven’t put a fraction of this together as you have. No one could make a more convincing argument, nor create a better battle plan.”
“There are certainly others,” he said, not being modest, “although not with my experience here. You will have to give them your experience. You see, Krisha, I can’t access that other plane. Not at all. I got one very brief, fleeting glimpse, and then I was closed out. All the talents—they’re mutations caused by interaction with that other plane as we traveled unknowingly through part of it. I am the opposite. Whatever is in the brain that gives you your powers it not present in mine.”
“But you passed through the others!”
“That was the others. I keep remembering how primitively the Quintara were dressed, not only compared to us but even to that projected pair. At first I thought that they might be savages who somehow were trapped within the system, but we know that’s not true. Why, then, such primitive clothing and no devices at all? I’ve puzzled over that, and I think I’ve guessed it. Anyone else who finds one of those stations in our own universe is going in loaded for big game. Even we went in with full weapons and e-suits. They are programmed to recognize this. It’s the simplest yet most foolproof security system ever developed, and shows how clever they really are. It’s programmed to transport living carbon and silicon-based life to any other station, through that other plane, perhaps converting it all to energy and then back to matter at the other end so that anyone can survive in there and perceive what’s lurking. But if you take anything with you—any artifact, any machinery, so much as a stitch of clothing—it will only transport you to the next station in the series, leading you eventually here. They don’t need to carry anything. With their power, they can use yours, or maybe even create their own. Who knows?”
She shook her head in wonder. “You make sense, but you have no proof. You are deducing this. It is a talent fully as supernatural as any talent I know, and you do it all the time. You did it back on Medara, and a dozen times before that. Captain—do you feel certain that what you say is true?”
“Pretty well. When things fit, no matter how ridiculous they seem, and you discard everything else, whatever remains is almost always true, if not complete. For example, just in discussing this, I’ve realized that the Quintara alone didn’t construct the network of stations.”