“How far?”
“Apparently to the horizon. The computer says that the top section is a separate machine with its own power source and can be detached. Because of its shape, it almost certainly flies. Our own scans indicate a capacity of no more than four box occupants.”
“Scouting, then, not troop transport. That means the initial group is there to secure the landing site and scout out the terrain. They’re the leading wave, and that’s bad. Keep those forces at the equator. Is it safe for our boys to move?”
“We’ve energized the two forward sections of the tunnel. The rest is safe.”
“The temple access gates are open,” Suzl added. “Get ’em started, I’d say. Nothing remotely alive as we know it is going to get down that tunnel from the ship right now.”
“They’ll be alive as we know it,” Matson assured her. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be here.”
“Power’s on in the ships.” Spirit announced. “We detected a slight trembling. It’s Flux power—they’re stepping down to normal Flux levels and drawing a string from the Gate itself. Harmless to humans, but enough for them. The computer believes that it is recharging its energy cells.”
“That figures. We must have done it the same way, and Haller and his people came back down through the tunnel and over to here.”
“The computers agree. There is a ring of power collectors around a hatch of some directed at the tunnel. Because their ships weren’t designed for our Gates, but because it seems you have to do it just this way or it doesn’t work, they’ve sacrificed stability inside their ship to keep their collector over that tunnel entrance. The computer now agrees entirely with your speculation, you might like to know, except that they have a way to store it before use. Just cutting power won’t stop them.”
“Sure it will, and they’ll know it. It’ll get ’em out in the open.”
“Sligh is trying a broadcast on every frequency known to him,” she told him. “The usual welcome and assurances of peace and friendship and all that. So far no response.”
“Whoa!” Suzl called out, almost falling down. “There was a sudden big power surge there!”
Out at the Gate, a huge and partly visible wall sprang up, looking like a giant inverted glass bowl. It covered the area around the Gate for a distance of more than five kilometers, trapping the welcoming committee and all nearby forces inside.
“It’s a shield!” Cassie shouted. “It’s a wizard’s shield in Anchor!”
“In Anchor, yes, but its source is Flux from the Gate itself,” Spirit told them.
“They are the demons of Hell come now to keep us from finding the true path,” Cassie whispered so low that none of the others clearly heard.
“The shield’s a good one,” Suzl reported. “About the only thing getting through it is air.”
“Where’s its power coming from, though? The ship or the Gate?” Matson asked her.
“Definitely the ship.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of power to drain. Any way to find out just how much of a drain it is?”
“We can figure the power required to maintain it, and it’s very close to the amount of power coming in from the Gate. We don’t know their storage capacity, though.”
“Any attempt at communications on our part?”
“The Commander’s been trying, but so far nothing. Nothing for Sligh, either, by the way. They don’t like the fact that they’re trapped, and they’re trying to put as good a light on it as they can. They sure didn’t expect this, though.”
Spirit was grimmer, yet firm. “The probilities are great that they know about us—where we are and what we have if not who we are. They haven’t even tried to use the tunnel. The Commander’s made her decision. She is now transmitting what is essentially an ultimatum. If they do not immediately open contact, she will act upon them as a hostile force.”
“Good girl. Can you give me an estimate on whether or not we have sufficient force to move that thing?”
“We don’t know its exact composition so we don’t know its weight. If it’s greater than a million tons, no. If it’s somewhere around there, it depends on just how far we have to nudge them. It doesn’t much matter. If it doesn’t work, they will have to make the next move.”
“If it doesn’t work,” Matson responded, “the living may envy the dead before we’re through.”
20
MISTAKE IN TIMING
The Anchor Luck computer had first become aware of Matson’s unorthodox reasoning when he had explained some of his theories to Mervyn and to Adam Tilghman. As defense installations, they were preprogrammed with basic strategies and methods; as self-aware devices, although not in a way humans would understand that term, they were also aware that certainly their standardized methods would probably fail by themselves as they must have in the other colonies. And, as self-aware devices, they were capable of learning even from such a slow-thinker as the stringer colonel, and then following up on his plans. They were basically programmed to defend against hostile human attack; otherwise, they were maintenance computers, established primarily to form the new world and keep it stable. Their programming also required that all major decisions must be approved or requested by humans. They could recommend, but needed Spirit and Suzl to act, and they awaited the order of their Commander.
But a message was received from the strange object. It came from the southern ship only, indicating that it was in fact the command ship of the fleet, and it came not at computer speed but in the English of their ancestors.
“We are Samish,” it said, although that last word was subject to a great deal of interpretation. It was in no known tongue or inflection. “We wish no fight, no death of your people. Resistance to us is evil. Resistance to us is against the Plan. Those who do what is righteous and what is their destiny will be as gods. Only those who are evil will be destroyed.”
“Sounds like the Holy Mother Church,” Jeff commented, listening to it with the rest of them.
“Definitely machine-generated speech,” Spirit told them. “Doubtful it’s a translator. Probabilities are that they can’t naturally talk our way.”
“Missionaries!” Matson spat. “Missionaries with power. Damn! The worst combination!”
The Commander proceeded cautiously, and on the open voice band they were using, allowing the computer to suggest and guide her comments.
“We also do not wish any loss of life, but we do not comprehend your initial statement. Please clarify.”
“It is the order of things,” the Enemy replied. “To Samish was given the power. Samish was anointed Lords of Creation. We now are exploring our domain. The First Lord has raised up others to serve Samish. Samish must root out all evil to achieve perfection of the universe. You are not the first of your kind Samish has been guided to by the First Lord. Within the past—year—we have come upon you three times. The first was righteous, and gave over to Samish. The second was evil, and fought Samish. Samish destroyed them and remade them in the image decreed by the First Lord. The third had both good and evil. Samish set the good over the evil. It is the way of things. Samish brings the truth and the power to the under-races.”
“Now it sounds like a Fluxlord,” Sondra noted.
“That’s pretty much what the computers think it’s offering,” Suzl told them. “If we surrender, it’ll give us all Flux power. If we fight, it’ll destroy us. And if we’re mixed, it’ll create Fluxlords out of the ones who go along and Fluxlings out of the rest. Of course, the computers supporting them will be Samish computers, so it’d be hierarchical. However, the computers believe that three in the last year is beyond the bounds of probability. It believes the odds are even that either the Samish year is very, very long, or else they still believe it’s twenty-six hundred and eighty-two years ago. The computer is inclined for a number of reasons to the latter belief.”
Matson laughed and clapped his hands. “Sure—now it all makes sense! Nobody, but nobody, waits that long just to invade. No culture, no civilization, is that static, not an expanding, militaristic one with a missionary complex. And even if they did, they wouldn’t show up just five minutes after the Gates were opened. They’d leave some kind of sensing device to signal them if and when and go on their way.”
The computers took a nanosecond or so to decide pretty much what Matson was doing in a far longer period. They had taken the first three colonies they’d hit after intersecting the human string, then set off the next—World. The three leading ships of the attack force had been sent ahead to negotiate and determine conditions, scout out the land, and make contacts. The main force would follow. But they were converted into energy and then shot as energy along the string in that alternate universe, and when they got here the Gates were locked. They couldn’t get in, they couldn’t back up, and they couldn’t in energy form even get a recall. They might even have blocked the entrance. They had been just outside in that energy swirl all this time—as energy. No time had passed for them.
Considering the span of time, World had simply outlived them. And because of World’s unique culture and traditions, it had changed the least in all that time, while civilizations rose and fell, messianic campaigns were waged and then ebbed, great discoveries had been made. Only World, and its lonely invaders, had remained stagnant.
The Commander’s computer suggested a confirmation question. “We assume the Soviet world was the evil one.”
“We do not know that world. The evil one was the People’s Republic Expreditionary Force,” responded the Samish.
Confirmation! That was the Chinese colony.
The probability, then, was quite small that the horde behind them was even now rushing to World. The problem was boiling down to getting rid of six thousand and a bit more of the Samish, whatever they were.
“We regret that we must refuse your offer,” the Commander told them. “You cannot offer as a reward that which we already possess.”
“You do not know what you say,” the Samish replied. “We have the power to give you control of the energy of the First Lord’s universe. We ask only for the worship we are due.”
Matson needed no computer to guess the “recent” (to them) history of the Samish. An egocentric race, like humanity, believing it was the center of all creation, had discovered the Flux universe and developed its technology to use it, and apparently not that much differently than humanity had, no matter what the difference in the two races. There was only one way to do it without getting smeared all over creation and they’d done it. Only their method of manipulating Flux differed, and probably only in detail. Somehow they had come upon, the first time, what had happened here on World, a merger of mind and machine. In their case, theology and science had not conflicted. They searched for their god’s heaven, and saw it in the Flux universe, one of brilliant and limitless energy and light.
Then they had come upon others out there, on the worlds the strings took you to. They found intelligent life, but life very different from their own—and life which did not have the power over Flux that they did.
The first was righteous, and gave over to Samish.
How human of them, Matson thought. He remembered when Coydt and the New Eden Brotherhood had attacked and seized Anchor Logh. By the time the liberators had arrived, the population had been willing to endure whatever indignities and horrors the new government could and would administer to save their own lives and those of their children.
The Chinese, whoever they were, had fought to the last one, although they had lost. That, too, was human. They had chosen death, and a courageous one, to deny their conquerors the spoils of war.
The third, which had split into two camps, was the most human of all. There the Company directors, or their counterparts, had outargued or outmaneuvered the army until it was too late to seal the Gates. The resulting civil war, with the Company on the Samish side, had placed the directors as Fluxlords of that world over the vanquished.
Near the Gate, Onregon Sligh gnashed his teeth and pounded his fist in frustration. He could listen in on the conversation, but the power on both sides was so strong that even if he could break in he’d be ignored. And he had no idea who the hell the Samish were bargaining with.
“I told you there was somebody else,” Gifford Haldayne said accusingly. He looked around at the others. They were all there, crowded around the small transceiver: Rosa Haldayne. Chua Gabaye, Ming Tokiabi. Varishnikar Stomsk. . . . All but Zelligman Ivan.
“They’re offering us nothing at all,” Gabaye snapped. “We already control the whole damned planet! All we did was get suckered into being trapped in Anchor.”
“I wonder,” said Gifford Haldayne. staring at the transceiver, “if we’ve been kidding ourselves about that all these years. We opened the Gates, but they sure as hell aren’t talking to us.”
“Whoever they are, they will soon attack.” Sligh predicted. “Then we will attempt to strike whatever deal we can.”
Sligh was certainly correct in at least the first part of his statement. Clearly further conversation was getting neither side closer together.
“You may go in peace,” the Commander told them, “or you may put down your shield and we can attempt friendly relations. The choice is yours. But we will not subordinate ourselves to another race. We have had quite enough of that among ourselves, thank you.”
She still sounded like a librarian, Matson thought, but she was also playing it cool, calm, and correct and she clearly had the guts for this business. Those Soul Riders picked well, it seemed.
“It is unnatural, against the grand scheme of the universe,” the Samish responded. “Under-races which deny the primacy of the First Lord also deny the Divine Scheme. Such is corruption, such is evil. Even now there are forces within our shield poised to strike us. We will demonstrate our power.”
The small pinched-top section of the main ship began to glow, then with a sound of connectors snapping back it freed itself of the main ship and lifted slowly and dramatically into the air.
“Stand by to place firm thrust attack into operation!” came the Commander’s message to the operations officers at the northern and southern Anchors. “The loss of weight of the vehicle may have tipped things in our favor.”
They had packed the tunnels nearly solid with every type of explosive known that they could lay their hands on. The Guardians now dropped the safety shield just ahead of the regulator and pumped highly compressed air into the gaps in the massive load. In effect, it was Matson’s great cannon, aimed at the massive but exposed underbelly of the ships.
The small flying vehicle made a humming sound as it took off from the Gate and headed out towards the largest New Eden force within the shield. Similar ships took off almost simultaneously from Gates Two and Six, but this time in Flux.
The computers shifted their estimates, and through the district commanders instructed and briefed the wizards in the north about what was to happen. The Nine had been reduced to the Five, but because of their abilities to travel Flux at great speed, Talanane and Serrio were at Gate Two, and the other three were at Gate Six. Their strong powers, combined with that of the local wizards and Fluxlords, was considerable.
The small ships were obviously Flux amplifiers of some sort, but they were within the greater shield and did not have a great deal of shielding themselves. The wizards of the north watched them come, waiting until the last moment to erect their own shields. Mervyn, alone, had once beaten an amplifier; no one in Flux was alone, and the Nine had amplifiers of its own, used up to now to guard the Gate and pulled back when that had proven useless.
The New Eden defenders were more constrained, but so was the ship. In an Anchor environment its amplifiers were very limited, and they tried to pick up power from the city electrical lines and grids. Suzl was able to pretty much block this, leaving the ship to other armaments.
The Samish were about to discover that they had picked a unique offshoot of humanity, primitive though it was culturally and technologically. This was a hard, nasty race, who’d practiced on itself what the Samish alone believed they possessed. When the feared demons had proven to be no more than strong wizards, the Fluxlords felt themselves right at home.
The New Eden ship rose into the air and hovered there a moment, then shot a series of devastating rays into the main body of troops about a kilometer from Anchor. There was tremendous loss of life and materiel where the rays struck, but hard-bitten commanders who’d conquered three Anchors ordered a return fire with rockets and sweeping heat rays.
In the north, the Fluxlord’s shields went on. It would not stop the ray weapons, but it sure as hell stopped the ships well short of the main body. Wizards who had conquered other powerful Fluxlands knew well to disperse their troops and their most powerful wizards, but they would have to take some losses from the rays until the commander made her move.
“Now!” came the order from Holy Anchor, and simultaneously small sparks of Flux flew from the firewalls into the explosive. The projectile was not shot or shell, but air—compressed air, which would go through the shield, propelled by the mighty force of the giant explosions which had no place to go but out the tunnel.
All three ships shuddered, and for a brief moment their shields flickered, but then reformed. For New Eden it was not enough, but for the northern defenders in Flux it was the opening they waited for. Power from the Fluxlord’s shields reached out like a living thing and struck and engulfed the tiny ships in the few precious seconds of power cuts. Mighty fingers of force gripped the ships and squeezed them, compressing them more and more into dense balls of metal glowing with great heat. Now the commanders, using their Soul Rider connections, concentrated everything they had on the master shield. It wavered, and broke several times, reforming as a smaller and yet more powerful shield. They smashed it again and again, and did manage to restrict it to the area just around the Gates, but from that point the alien shield held. They kept the pressure on, but knew they would have to find an alternate way to the Enemy’s heart.
In the south, the alien’s flying craft was faring better. Capable of instant bursts of great speed and near supernatural maneuverability, it was having no trouble keeping out of the way of the weaponry being hurled at it, and its ray projectors definitely had a far better range.
“We taught them respect in the north.” Spirit said glumly, “but those ships were too heavy for what we had to explode. They still have their power and their equipment.”
Matson looked over the small company in the control center. “Other than Suzl and yourself, who has the greatest Flux power in this room?”
“In practical terms, the twins,” she responded, “although Mom has greater potential. She can’t use it herself, but with spells fed to her, her past experience will make them the most effective. Why?”
“Because I think there’s a power big enough to budge that ship, if she’s willing to go along and if you’re willing to do the dirtiest thing you’ve ever done in your whole life.”
“The computers can’t divine your meaning. Explain.”
“The key to what you said is potential. Do me a favor. Ask your computer who was stronger in absolute terms, Coydt or Cassie.”
Spirit looked surprised. “Why—in relative access ability, she’s much stronger. But—she lost to him!”
“That’s the point. Your Mom overall has had a pretty unhappy life for somebody always at the top. She took on Gifford Haldayne with almost no training and beat him as easy as you’d step on a bug. Then she totally remade an entire Fluxland and stopped massed armies from fighting in a matter of minutes. In the backwash, without even knowing it, she restored me to life. I understand how it was done now, but she doesn’t—and I don’t think it’d ever been done before. It wasn’t intellect, although the intellect’s there, that made her so powerful, or Coydt, either. It was emotion—raw, burning, overpowering feelings. It strengthens the link to the computer and acts like a massive amplifier. The computer here will deliver whatever it takes.”
“But she lost to Coydt!”
“Deep down she wanted to lose. She’d had two decades of living a life of terrible responsibility and near total deprivation as the head of the Church. She knew I was there, and it damn near killed her because she wanted me and couldn’t ever have me. All she needed to do was to keep Coydt occupied until I blew that amplifier. She didn’t need to beat him to defeat him, and she knew it.”
Spirit shook her head sadly. “Oh. my God!” she whispered. She looked over at her mother and felt the onset of tears. She understood, too, the truth of what he was saying. The Soul Rider had not understood it, merely tapped it when it was present, but it knew. Under the height of passion in the Hellgate. Suzl had assumed her powers and gained sufficient computer access, at least for a time, to sense the presence of the control room and to break the unbreakable spells that had bound Spirit. The key was always there, but the computers did not think as humans thought, and what was not quantifiable was not truly real to them. Even now they resisted, granting his point but also noting that such a level cannot be deliberately reached, and that was to be regretted. With the power of raw Flux to tap just behind her. and the regulator to keep it in bounds, the amount of force that she could potentially generate could indeed do the job—could, in fact, do almost anything.
“There is a possible way.” Matson told her. “although it’s a gamble. It might work, it might not. If it does, though, you and I will feel a little bit filthy for the rest of our unnatural lives.”
“Side hatches are opening!” Suzl shouted. “They’re coming out!”
“Tell eveyone to hold their fire!” Sligh ordered. “At least we’re going to see just who we are dealing with.”
The hatch opened inward on the upper portion of the ship, then a long ramp of the same metallic substance as the ship extended, correcting for the ship’s list, and reached all the way to the Gate apron. Within moments, the first of the Samish troopers began coming out. Onregon Sligh felt the hair on the back of his neck straighten and rise. Many in the crowd screamed, and a number began to run.
The control room personnel all watched the viewer. Only the New Eden ship was opening; the two in the north had been badly stung and weren’t about to risk anything yet.
The creatures were like nothing ever seen, even in the most terrible of nightmares. They were shaped somewhat like rounded hourglasses on their side, with the rear section a bit thicker and more elongated. The front half contained two stalked eyes that were huge, unblinking, with blood-red irises and heart-shaped pupils of deep purple which seemed oddly dull and segmented, like those of insects. There was really no up or down to the creatures; their bodies were covered with thin, snakelike tentacles each resembling hard steel wire, and these seemed to spring out of the body, or retract, at will and as needed, and with blinding speed. Just how many tentacles they had was unclear, for their bodies were completely covered in thick, matted black fur. The tentacles moved in some cases so fast the human eye couldn’t follow them, yet they never tangled. They walked on them, and used them as a nearly infinite set of fingers. The tips apparently could secrete some sort of substance that allowed perfect traction in any eventuality, but left an ugly slime where they touched.
The first Samish to emerge were armed with unfamiliar devices that had to be weapons, and they went up onto the polished metal surface of the ship, taking the high ground. Observers could see on some of these a sac-like opening on the rear body section that seemed to open and close in regular, undulating motions. Whether it was a mouth, an anus, some sort of reproductive sac, or something no human could understand was unknown.
The defensive computers observed, analyzed, and made their informed speculations. The eyes were independent and the motion of the creatures was equally exact forwards, backwards, or sideways. There were tentacles waving about over various parts of the body, serving no apparent function. Since there was no physical difference in the spindly things, it seemed obvious that these were multi-purpose organs, not merely arms and legs but possibly delivering all the senses except sight.
Their extreme precision in large numbers spoke of exceptional organization and training, or what the computers suspected from the conversation at the start. Their English, although ancient, had been quite good, yet they had never referred to themselves as a group or race—not “the Samish” or “we Samish,” but always simply as “Samish.”
“Based on available data,” Spirit told them, “the computers believe that we are seeing a collective organism totally bonded to its computers. Each ship is an entity, not each Samish.”
“That fits,” Matson replied. “The army obviously had a great fear of that, right here when it discovered wizards and spells and figured out what was happening. That’s why it created the independent units and the limited access. It must have happened to the first Samish to successfully handle Flux.”
She nodded. “They programmed their computers, which included their beliefs and their oddities. To them it must have been a religious experience. By now they must simply breed each colony matched to the colony’s central computer.”
“Explains why they’re unbeatable in a head-on battle. No human army could match that degree of precision, coordination, and suicidal dedication. We must take out their computers or we lose. Given enough time, all they need is a standoff. Who knows how many eggs or whatever they’re carrying, or can produce?”
Spirit approached Cassie, who was sitting there, spellbound and horrified, watching the spectacle on the screen. With Spirit’s link to her mother’s mind through the computer, she was appalled at what she found there. Shock, horror, revulsion, fear and hatred all churned irrationally in Cassie’s mind. Her old and new religious training had overridden her pragmatism, aided and abetted by the unrestrained emotion her Fluxgirl body allowed. To Cassie those were not alien invaders but the demons of Hell up there, the very horror she had always pictured in her nightmares since she’d been a child. In a very basic way she had regressed through all the shocks and horrors she had experienced in the past day to that little girl, seeing monsters in the darkness after the horrors of Hell were explained to her. And in her current body, with over sixteen years of letting it be in control, she had no way to damp it down from within.
But Spirit could be damped, and hardened, by the cold pragmatism of the machine to which she was wed. She could easily damp down her mother’s state, but she did not. Instead she took hold of it, fed it, enhanced it. and edited it.
“Mother, only you can defeat them.” Spirit told her firmly. “Only you can save our souls. Will you do it, for whatever Gods there are and for your children?”
She looked up at Spirit and her expression was painful for the human part of her daughter to look upon.
Suzl came over and gently eased Spirit away, then took Cassie’s hand. “Come on, Cass! We have to serve the purpose we were born to.”
Matson started to object as it became clear that Suzl was going to accompany Cassie all the way to the Gate itself, but Spirit cut him off.
“Suzl’s purged the tunnel and freshened the air from Anchor. She can handle her basic job from there. The Samish aren’t anywhere near Anchor yet.” She swallowed hard. “In a way, Suzl is doing a tougher thing to herself than to Cassie. And I’ve got to do it to both of them.”
Matson took his daughter’s hand and squeezed it gently. Until this time he had barely known her, but at this moment, she felt every bit his daughter. By her acceptance of his plan, they shared a terrible bond that would always be present.
Cassie remained pretty much in a state of shock as she and Suzl entered the Gate. There was no immediate danger to them there; Suzl controlled the mechanism jointly with three other Guardians who were watching from their own control centers. She issued the commands that opened computer access to them, fed as well by the other three controllers, and other commands that would place the basic maintenance and routine operations of the center on automatic. She then blocked the command structure from her mind, surrendering command and control to the other three Guardians. She no longer had any more command power over the great computer. She and Cassie had equal and open access to the command files, but not on a rational basis.
She began to be afraid.
At the other end of the tunnel, the Samish continued to disgorge their horrible bodies and much materiel and equipment from the ship. Sentries kept the humans near the tower under constant surveillance, weapons at the ready, covering the build-up.
Sligh was on the transceiver on the frequency the Samish had used, trying to reestablish contact. He was all mind— cold, hard intellect, and he was thinking fast and furious.
“The installation at the tower is no threat.” he assured them. “The people in and around the tower and its buildings are not your enemies. We wanted you here. We opened the Gates for you. We wish only to learn from you. Do you understand this message?”
Finally, there came a reply. “You can access the power?”
“Some of us, yes, but not where we stand.”
“Those of you who can will approach the installation with no weapons or other implements. Those who cannot must remain exactly where they are. Do this now.”
The Haldaynes, Gabaye. Tokiabi and Stomsk all crowded around inside the small communications shack.
“I’m not going to walk alone and unarmed into the monster’s nest.” said Chua Gabaye firmly. “We’re not even sure what they eat.”
“We remain here as common prisoners, lowest of the low, or we go down and take our chances,” the always impassive Tokiabi noted flatly. “We always knew that death was a possibility, but it is no more certain now than before.”
“But there’s no profit in it.” Gifford Haldayne complained.
“How do we know?” Sligh responded. “How can we be certain? Regardless, the stakes have been raised. As Ming so nicely put it, we either take our chances down there or, when they’re ready for us, we’ll be made into their mindless, worshipping slaves.”
“There is no other choice,” Stomsk put in. “You saw with what ridiculous ease they crushed the best trained and equipped Anchor army on World. Soon they will be able to drain off whatever power they require and take on the others. They’re probably already in control of the north. In this instance, the odds say to be good, not evil. I will go down.”
“Everyone can make up their own mind on this.” Sligh told them. He turned back to the transceiver. “We are coming down. Your friends are coming down to you.” Then he picked up the radio and smashed it against the wall before any of the others could stop him.
“What’d you do that for?” Haldayne asked angrily.
“No separate deals, no funny business. We play it their way as long as it is our only choice.”
They went outside and looked across to where, on the apron, the creatures were swarming all over, building things whose purpose was not yet known with astonishing speed and using tools made for them.
“Funny,” said Gifford Haldayne. “That’s just where we trapped Tilghman last night. I kind of wish now I’d let him win.”
Suzl’s mind had become almost a complete blank. Like Cassie, she knew where she was and what was at the end of that tunnel, but overpowering contradictory emotions, urges, and impulses crowded out reason. They embraced, trying to draw some strength, some comfort, from each other’s presence, to shut out the fear and fend off the isolation. It turned, oddly, into a session of passionate lovemaking on the tunnel floor between the great swirl of the Gate and the solid mass of the regulator.
The computers, drawing upon their past experience and partially directed by Spirit, orchestrated the scene.
Cassie loved Suzl. Suzl loved Cassie. that was all that mattered, that was all there was in the world. The fires of the Hellgate glowed in response and were drawn to them in a warm rush. Their minds were a sea of emotion without thought, and bathed by the glow and strength of the Gate forces they became as one.
But there were images. . . .
Suzl as a deformed freak, with breasts longer than her arms and a male organ longer than her breasts, begging, pleading . . . “Make love to me. . . .”
Matson on his great horse, laughing as he directs artillery and rocket fire, then, suddenly, a mass of blood and falling, falling. . . .
Spirit, young, naked, and innocent, unable to communicate, unable to understand, held in a cage for laughing and jeering onlookers as she screams uncomprehendingly. . . .
Adam, falling, four bullets in him, coughing out his life and pleading for the life of a dream as his blood coats their naked bodies. . . .