Chin looked at Jimmy McCray. “Is that true?”
Jimmy looked down at the floor rather than at the captain, but he slowly nodded. “It was an overpowering urge, but it wasn’t any unthinking action. I was thinking too much, maybe. All of a sudden I knew, I just knew, I had to do it.
That if I did it everything would be all right, everything would work out, my soul would be purified. No question. It was like a revelation.”
“And do you still feel like that? Is that why you’re angry?”
“I—I don’t know. I wouldn’t do it, but I still can’t shake the idea that it’s right, somehow. You said it yourself, Cap. Those things can’t know us as individuals. They just let loose what we got in our own minds, what we hide away even from ourselves. Maybe that’s why I’m still a virgin. Maybe I don’t want to be a man. At least not in that way.”
“Most likely it’s guilt,” the captain replied, trying to make the little man feel a bit better. “You were a priest once and you rejected it, your vows, everything your life had stood for and believed in up to that point. You’re afraid you did it because you were selfish, carnal. That is a double-edged way out. You remove the source of your fall and punish yourself at the same time.”
He looked up at the captain. “I know the pop psychology. Probably right, too. The problem’s more basic than that. If I wasn’t a priest we might all be dead or enslaved back in that demon hellhole. Every bit of my knowledge that made me a real asset to the rest of you came from my being a priest. And then I get to the heights and this—this being— knows me, says we talked before, many times. That we, maybe all of us, were picked. That all along I’ve been an instrument of higher powers, which is what a priest is supposed to be. Before, it was easy. I was on non-Terran worlds and around non-Terran types, and then I had Grysta on my back, and then we had much too much to think about to be very carnal. Not now, though. Not this time. When we went in I wanted her, wanted her bad, and she wanted me, and there we were.” His eyes looked haunted. “There wasn’t any other way out, you see. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to resist. …”
Gun Roh Chin sighed. “Well, you’ll have to deal with your own problems as best you can, and so will the others. Consider Modra and Josef.”
“Hey, I’m linked to them, too, remember,” Jimmy said. “And he saved her life by what happened and she knows it.
Not deliberately, of course, but it’s the first case of rape I ever heard of that was a blessing. She just doesn’t want to face that, because that means facing her own dark little corners.”
“Eh? What? Saved her life?”
Jimmy nodded. “Before the link snapped I got a picture. It was only a second, maybe a fraction of a second, but it was all I need. She’s got enough guilt inside her to make a neutron star. She’d have killed herself in a matter of minutes if he hadn’t taken her over. Not, to be sure, that he knew it or that it had anything to do with what followed, but the knowledge gives him a sense of smug self-righteousness.” He gave a dry, mirthless chuckle. “What a crew of saviors we are!”
Gun Roh Chin gave a wry smile. “Would it surprise you if I said that I think we are a most extraordinary crew of saviors?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Beyond the balance of skills, talents, intelligence, and lack of commitments beyond our immediate mission, we’ve faced the burdens of our upbringing and now the burdens of our own worst selves and we’re all still here. And if you want to believe you’re on some sort of divine mission, fine, but take the entire package because logic says you should.”
“What?”
“Consider that, perhaps, Grysta’s purpose was to save you from yourself. That her actions, too, were meant to be.”
With that, Gun Roh Chin walked back into the middle cabin. As he did, the big, hairy figure of Josef came down from the top bubble.
“How is Tobrush doing?” the captain asked him.
“All right. The gas put the body out but not the real Tobrush inside it. It was just immobile. He says he spent the whole time fighting the stuff off. That it kept trying to enter and bond with him.”
Chin frowned. “Bond? What does he mean by that?”
“Remember we said that stuff couldn’t exist on its own in our universe? Not unless it was encased, protected, anyway. Think about every scary story you ever heard about the supernatural. Demonic possession, the walking dead, the vampires and werewolves that used to scare my ancient ancestors—stuff like that.”
“All cultures have such legends, or their equivalents.”
Josef nodded. “That’s the bottom line, Captain. It doesn’t just happen in any of the stories. Demons come when they’re summoned, intentionally or otherwise; vampires and werewolves and their ilk are created by blood and deliberate acts. The bottom line … It doesn’t need idols, it just uses them. It can use bodies, too, and minds.”
Suddenly Gun Roh Chin understood. “That’s what it was trying to do! Take control! Good Lord! Think of the number of ships and people traveling through subspace! Think of the automatic pilots and programmed courses that might not avoid what they’re told cannot be there! They’re doing more man controlling commerce—they’re making converts! Forcible converts! Ones who not only will then sow an evil path, but who will also make the pentagrams and ensnare the unwary and make gateways for the Quintara to enter!”
The big man nodded. “We’ve decided not to make for any frontier posts. In less than three days we’ll be at a position only Tobrush knows. One from which he can contact the highest levels of his own people—and I don’t mean the Julki. So far, the further in we go, the fewer blips I’m getting on the monitors. At least you’re right about that part, it seems. They’ve got less of that stuff to go around than they need.”
Gun Roh Chin sat perched casually on the edge of a storage locker, Tobrush nearby at his console in the upper bubble.
“I know you have the power to seal the others out,” the captain said softly. “I’d like a private conversation.”
“You may speak freely,” the Mycohl master responded. “The Julki brain is linked to theirs, but I am rerouting the input-output to my true self and operating manually. None will overhear if you do not wish it.”
“It’s about the others that I’ve come to speak.”
“Yes, I thought as much. We are only two hours from egress.”
“You’re monitoring them, linked to them. Surely you’ve noticed the changes.”
“Changes in Terran behavior and attitudes are not always so obvious to an outsider.”
The captain smiled, wondering if he was being put on. “I’m talking about slow, steady behavioral changes over the past three days from the episode. Krisha has withdrawn almost into a shell. She speaks little, refuses to put on the e-suit, and half the time doesn’t seem to understand what’s said to her, even by me.”
“Yes, that is noted. Her thoughts are very dark and very confused and frightened. The memory of her ordeal is strong and she is having trouble at times distinguishing it from reality. She has been very strong up to now. I had hoped some time and rest would allow her to sort things out.”
“Those were my own thoughts,” Chin agreed. “But it is not isolated. There’s Modra, too. Rape is one of the things a Terran woman fears most. It is an ugly invasion of her most private area, and is used in some cultures as a violent cultural act to keep women from leading roles through fear. Just after the encounter, she reacted just that way, just the way I would have expected. Now suddenly it was no big deal, and she’s all over Josef and she’s made love to him twice of her own accord in the past two days.”
“Four times. You sleep more than they do. It might have been more if they had been less bruised and battered.”
“Four! Even worse!”
“I found a great deal of the ritual and physical addenda quite fascinating. The oral parts in particular are quite unusual in that they have no direct relationship to the primary functions. I could not, however, know out of hand that this follow-up behavior was unusual. There are many races . . .”
“Yes, I know. But it is. Highly unusual. And McCray— he’s become cruel, even violent to Grysta, and co!3 and distant to the other two women, while he eggs Josef on and even tried to get me to force myself on Krisha. When you try and put him down he flies into rages and either approaches violence or stalks off. Josef—I haven’t seen as much of a change in him. It’s more one of degree, I suppose, but I have less comparison there.”
“Josef has gone the last step to what you would call a megalomaniac. He no longer sees people as individuals, only as toys for his own amusement. Before, he would kill to survive; now he would kill if it pleased him to do so. He is utterly without conscience and is incapable of remorse. Only by subtly stimulating and directing his impulses have I managed to keep him under control. What you sense is true. They are all corrupted.”
Gun Roh Chin sighed. “That—stuff, that evil, programmable plasma, got in, then.”
“Yes. I was too weak and disoriented for the first few hours afterwards to really recognize it. I knew from the assault it waged upon my own person how it could work, but it did not occur to me at the time that I was not the only one under attack. By the time it did occur to me, it had integrated itself into their systems so as to be beyond any known means of detection. What one cannot detect, one cannot excise.”
“But don’t they recognize it?”
“Yes, but it is in the very fundamentals of evil that one always condemns it when they see it but rationalizes it when they do it. They are not going over to the enemy—they are much too strong for that. But they are undergoing a corrupting metamorphosis that makes them more like their enemy. I can control the three through the mind-link, even moderate them if need be. You and the syn seem to have escaped its grasp due to your physiological makeup. About Krisha I can do little, since she is using it to create her own self-enforcing hell. We can hypno her to a degree for our immediate purposes, but only for short and, I suspect, decreasing periods of time. The Quintara energy, for want of a better term, is there to resist counter-moves and, although a raw program as amorphous in many ways as its true shape, it is programmed to survive and is capable of learning how.”
“You mean there’s no hope for her—them—then?”
“I didn’t say that. What I need is a way to get the material to manifest itself. If I can detect it, I can isolate and remove it. It will not reverse things to do so, but it will free them to reverse things as they will. We must get it out. We dare not go up against the Quintara without doing so. I believe that the Quintara can program the material by sheer force of will if they are in close proximity to it. With that stuff inside them, the Quintara would be able to remake them into their own image. It is my hope that when we egress for the first time, the material inside them, which has never had that experience before, will be briefly shocked and undergo a self-protective reaction. Using the mind-link, I might well be able to excise the material in the three to which I am metaphysically attached.”
“Yes, but even if it works, you said it learns. Krisha—”
“I will do what I can, but I am unsure of success even with my own. If not, then we shall have to find some other way. I do not have it all yet, nor do you, but without the Mizlaplan there is no success. Of that I am convinced. And you are not the one to bring us the Mizlaplan, Captain. You know that. That leaves but one candidate.”
The captain sighed. “All right. We are in your hands right now. There seems nothing more we can do.”
“Not, at least, until I have reported to my own kind. Leave me now; I must prepare for the brief moment of possible opportunity. Watch them carefully, though, at the moment of egress. If I am successful, who knows what will result?”
“I will do what I can, as you will.”
“It is all that can be done right now. Oh—Captain?”
“Yes?”
“Have you any more thoughts on how we are expected to win this thing, even if the unlikely event comes to pass that all the pieces fit into place? I begin to fear that we may have the weapon but not the instruction manual.”
“I know. And yet, I can’t help feeling that the answer is right in front of our faces, if only we could recognize it. It is a puzzle requiring more pieces, I fear, but the pieces only assemble a lock. The key is still required.”
Gun Roh Chin sat staring at Krisha trying to think of something he could do. She just sat there, naked, on the
floor, her arms wrapped around her pulled-up legs, and stared vacantly at some point only she could see.
“Want to know what she’s thinking, Captain?” Jimmy McCray asked in a casual, almost amused tone.
“I know you’re a telepath, McCray, but until now I hadn’t thought you were a voyeur.”
McCray shrugged. “We’re all voyeurs. We just don’t like to admit it to anybody, that’s all. But I don’t have to make any effort with her. She’s become the worst kind of talent to be, a broadcast telepath. Even ordinary folks, the kind with no talents at all, can know pretty well what she’s thinking just by staring at her. Not as clear as a telepath, or as deep, but pretty well. I’ve known a couple in my life. Live well away from just about anybody, doing the kind of shit jobs loners do. It’d drive me nuts to be like that; you can never lie, never have even the most private secrets. Most of ’em wind up insane or suicidal, but she’s not the suicide type. Deep down she still believes all that guff she was raised on.”
“/ was raised on that ‘guff,’ as you call it, too,” he reminded the little man. “And you were raised in and believed a different but equally solid system. Just out of curiosity—what do you believe in now?”
“Me. That’s what I believe in. What I can see, feel, hear, touch, and use. That’s more than most germs believe in, I think.”