When the field imprisoning him cut off, Harybdartt froze, startled by the sudden absence of the thought-connection. He was alone . . . in the station . . . under attack. It took him a moment to react. Several sharp jerks loosened the strap restraints, and he was free. He sprang across the room, away from the robot medical devices. He heard a hiss of escaping air, and outside, clanging alarms. The sound was growing fainter as the air pressure fell. His spacesuit was nowhere to be found. Probably it had been dismantled by his captors.
He couldn't stay here. He peered through the window of the compartment door. Papers were spinning away down the corridor; nothing else was moving. Was the battle still going on outside? No way to know. He took a breath, jabbed at the door latch until it shuddered open—and dived out into the corridor, propelled by a whump of air from the compartment. A near-vacuum pulled at his skin.
He hurled himself toward the end of the corridor and passed a bloated Human corpse bobbing in weightlessness. He kicked himself farther down, his membranes stinging, eyes aching. Don't stop. At last he came to an armored hatch, with controls to one side. He stabbed and twisted at the controls. Nothing happened. His vision was blurring, and his thoughts. His membranes burned. Keep the focus . . .
He launched himself down the side passageway, caromed off the walls, and slammed into a door at the end. There was practically no sound; the air was almost totally gone now. He squeezed his eyes, blinked them open painfully. A window. He pressed his face to it, saw an empty compartment and another window, and beyond it something moving. He stabbed at a control panel . . . again . . . again; the door slid open. He tumbled through.
It was an airlock. He prodded at a panel of squares; the door started to slide closed, then reversed itself. He hit the first square again. The door slid shut. He was trembling; ears ringing. More panels. He stabbed blindly. Keep the focus . . . A hard slam on the bottom square brought a blast of frigid air. He opened his membranes and took in a breath of the freezing, acrid stuff. He roared with pain . . . and the inner door slid open, and he jumped through.
Catching a handhold, he swung to a halt, gasping for breath. He looked around—and found himself face-to-face with a Human. The Human was backed into a corner, and he was aiming something that looked like a weapon squarely at Harybdartt's chest.
* * *
The first inkling Ramo had that things were going wrong was a sudden tightness, and a crawling sensation in the pit of his stomach. It was a distinctly odd reaction—wrong to the spirit of the music, wrong to the warmth that had been enveloping him. He stumbled and caught himself, and then knew that it wasn't coming from him; it was coming from the Ell. He shivered and tried to shake it.
Kyd was feeling it, too. [Ramo, what is it?] she whispered.
He couldn't answer; it was a flash of horror, of sickening fear. No! he thought, but the thought was swept away and what touched him, touched all. Eddie's voice faltered, and a rim shot from a snare drum abruptly altered the beat from brightness to foreboding. [Keep dancing,] he murmured, and his words reverberated through the senso. [Keep dancing!] he shouted, his voice filled with urgency and fear.
What was going wrong? Was it the Ell's horror? It felt like a Human horror, a Human fear. Where was it coming from?
Just keep the dance moving.
[Kyd,] he cried, trying to renew the feelings that had been stirring between them. But the memory couldn't hold; icy wet winds were sweeping through him, and Kyd's distress echoed his; and all they could do was to hold on to each other, one ghost holding another, their confusions intertwined.
. . . Until his head was suddenly filled with the sound of rushing water—and then it was gone, and so were the Ell and the intense feeling of dread—and so were the dancers, and the music, and Kyd; and he found himself dancing alone in a senso-field connected to nothing and to no one.
* * *
Lingrhetta felt the connection snap like a high-voltage fuse. The load broke, reverberating in his head, and he focused and refocused and tried to steady himself, to regain his center. Homeworld and the Circle were roaring like static, cut off from the Humans in the midst of their meditation. Their confusion was a whirlwind threatening to obliterate his center. (I must break the vortex,) he whispered to the Circle.
There was another sharp tug in his mind, and he was surrounded by silence. Blessed, frightening silence.
The captured fighter was quiet before him—the connection-field lifelessly enveloping him. Behind the fighter were the structures of Alert Outpost; and beyond that, the glowing clouds of the Anvil of Light. He had been in the connection so long that this outpost, his home, looked like an alien place to him now. He pushed himself out of the glowing field. He had never felt such exhaustion, and such . . . fear.
* * *
The meditation disintegrated like an iceberg in the springtime. Moramaharta tried to ease it to a gentle conclusion, and knew that he could not. The binding was unraveling with the breakup of the vortex, and all he could do was to get out of its way.
*
The explosions
*
flared
*
and the pain and fear
*
seared
*
and the memory
*
died.
*
Moramaharta blinked up and saw the members of the body shaking their heads. Weariness and confusion had overtaken all of them. Something was happening with the Circle, something perilous. Something he, and they, needed to understand. Had they destroyed the alien connection? Could it be recreated? Would they know what to do if it were?
Ignoring the puzzled expressions of the others, Moramaharta rose and left the chambers without a word and went straight out of doors. There was something inside him that ached terribly, and he was desperate to know what it was—and why an *El* could feel such an alien thing so keenly. He needed to be alone, to be among the trees and the wind and the sky, and to discover what it was that had pierced him.
* * *
"I don't know why the core shut down," Sage repeated numbly. "A station was hit that housed—"
"Part of its capacity," the Secretary said. "But not enough to cause the entire system to fail."
Sage gazed at him, unblinking. "Except that it has."
"The damage from that attack could not have been enough to cause the system to fail," insisted a tall, lanky man newly arrived. Sage recognized him. His name was Fredericks; he was chief of design operations for the Company—by reputation, a man of fair competence but limited imagination.
"What about it?" Martino said. "Can you tell me why he's wrong?"
Sage shook his head. He was tired and confused and upset. He had lost a friend when the core had died. Died. That, to him, was what had happened; he had felt it. He wished everyone would leave him alone to mourn—but he also wondered what the Ell were doing while they were standing here arguing.
"You two will cooperate in restoring the system to full function," the Secretary said.
Sage rubbed grit from his eyes. As far as he knew, no system like the AI-core had ever been shut down and restarted. "If he knows how to do it," Sage said, indicating Fredericks, "fine. I don't know how."
Fredericks' eyes flashed. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you started—"
"That's enough!" Martino said wearily. "We don't have time for it. DeWeiler, Fredericks says they don't know if it can be done. It sounds to me as though they're just afraid to try."
Fredericks said, "Do you have any idea how complex that system—?"
"It could go all wrong," Sage said at the same time.
Martino waved them both to silence. "You're a smart kid, DeWeiler. Maybe you're smarter than they are. You've performed amazing feats on the core before. Now, how about proving how smart you really are."
Sage closed his eyes, recoiling from the sarcasm. He felt the weight of responsibility returning. Where were his friends? Oh God, he needed sleep . . .
"DeWeiler!" Martino's voice was sharp, but it seemed miles away. "Our lives could depend on your doing it—immediately. Fredericks, will you give him the assistance he needs? And the clearance?"
Fredericks scowled, and finally nodded.
Sage blinked hard. The Company was going to agree to let him do it? They must be scared. He took a breath. "What's happening out there? Are they still attacking?"
Martino's gaze narrowed. "At the moment, no. But they're orbiting within striking range. Before the system went down it broadcast a planet-wide alert—so now we've got every nationalist force on the planet mobilizing, and mostly getting in one another's way. They're so disorganized, we're worse off than before—with twice the ships. If nothing else, we must have the GCS back."
Sage massaged his eyebrows, sighing. Didn't the Secretary realize that the GCS was just an aspect of the AI-core? Sage wasn't sure he could get anything working. If all the high-level Company designers were hiding like scared rabbits, why did they think he could do any better? He shivered. He felt suddenly very cold.
"We're trying to cooperate with other governments to avoid worldwide panic," Martino continued. "But that's another reason for urgency. Comprende?"
Sage nodded. He saw Pali and Kyd and Ramo talking together in the lounge area, looking his way. "All right," he murmured. Turning suddenly from the Secretary, he crossed the room to the coffee bar. He sighed as he neared his friends. "I've been drafted to save the world," he said in answer to their questions. He picked up a stale-looking roll and took a huge bite, drew himself a cup of moke, and turned back to the waiting rap-field.
* * *
It was like stalking the corridors of a silent, megalithic office building that was strangely, spookily empty. He explored one corridor after another—nervously rapping at doors, listening for a sign of another being, another spirit inhabiting this house. Occasionally he was aware of Company designers moving about on the periphery with their own investigations, but he ignored them. They were undoubtedly keeping a watch on him, but that was their problem, not his.
His problem was to locate the core's primary structure, or whatever was left of it. In the past, the core had always come to him, projecting its presence—except once, during the change, when it had supplied enhancements to illuminate the way. Now Sage had to find his own way. He tried not to dwell on the possibility that the core's actual structure had been destroyed. It was one thing to think of reawakening an intact gnostic program; but if the basic elements were gone . . . ?
He tried to avoid thinking about those Ell warships circling the planet.
This much he knew: the autonomic systems were still running. Business accounting systems were functional, and so were public communications and transport control, and even certain dumb elements of the military Gnostic Control System. But there was a pervasive feeling of flatness. What was missing was the awareness, the coordinating hand of a decision-maker. What was missing was the personality.
It seemed to have vanished without a trace. No echoes . . . no ripples . . . no debris.
But the damage from the attack had not been that severe! Some memory storage had been lost, some processing capacity, but nothing that couldn't be made up from other sections—which in fact should have happened.
Unless . . .
Unless the core hadn't wanted it to be made up.
Sage stopped looking for pieces and opened a communications node. [I need Ramo,] he said to the Secretary. [I need him now.]
* * *
[What's going on?] Ramo asked, obviously still bewildered. [Pali said there was an attack.]
Sage told him everything he had seen. [It wasn't just that attack, though. I'm sure of it.]
[What do you mean?]
[The core was acting wrong. I think it wanted to disappear.]
[Wanted to? You mean . . . like committing suicide?]
[Something like that, maybe.]
Ramo's presence rippled up and down the strata of the system, in confusion. [You're saying it's gone?]
[Maybe.]
[Then this is hopeless.]
[Or it may be in hiding.]
[But why? Why would it do that?]
Sage was silent a moment. [I thought maybe you could help me figure that out.]
Ramo laughed. It was an unhappy sound. [Why me?]
[We're in this together, aren't we?]
Ramo stopped pacing through the system and regarded him in somber surprise. [Okay,] he said softly. [Do you have an idea?]
Sage hesitated. [If it was trying to get away, it might have gone into the secure areas. Sections we wouldn't normally have access to.]
[So what do we do? Break in?]
[Well . . . I was hoping to stretch our clearance.]
Ramo snorted. [Lots of luck.]
[They didn't tell us not to.]
* * *
They flew through the system like a pair of hawks, scanning the terrain from a height and diving to wing their way through areas of interest. They found directories of the system's connections within the Company, and a snake's nest of linkages to other businesses; they found tentacles of the system leading deep into government—not just their own, but the governments of a dozen other nations; they found windows into the production of lesser gnostic systems, including the AI-fighters, but no markers signifying the core's presence; they found deep and dark passages like dungeon tunnels with locked doors, research and development areas, and other activities more secret.
[***** ALERT! ***** ALERT! ***** ALERT! *****]
[What the hell is that?] Ramo said.
[I think we . . .]
*
***
[*** ATTENTION! ***]
[*** YOU ARE IN A RESTRICTED AREA! ***]
[*** DISPLAY CLEARANCE CODES IMMEDIATELY! ***]
***
*
[Pay no attention,] Sage said.
[But that's going out through the whole system!]
[They'll shut it off. Keep moving. We're past most of the gates already.]
[Are you sure?]
Before Sage could answer, the surrounding veils shifted, and a spotlight clicked on. [What the hell are you doing, DeWeiler? You aren't cleared for that area!]
[That you, Fredericks?]
[Yeah. What's going on? You were cleared to go after the core, not into those files.]
[We're looking. Could the core have used these areas for secret storage?]
[I suppose . . . it's possible. But that's not an excuse to breach—]
[We've got to look,] Sage said. [Don't worry about your precious secrets. But let us into these files. Ramo?]
[Yo.]
[Follow me.] Sage dived.
[Wait!] Fredericks cried.
Sage ignored the voice. With Ramo close behind, he shot toward the last checkpoints. Automatic intruder-gates were dropping into place, but he was ready for them and dodged, with an intuitive feel for where detours would lie. The voices and the screens fell away behind, and they were flying free through the top-security files.
It was a tortuous terrain—far too much to assimilate—bizarre connections to other organizations, questionable endeavors and researches. There were suggestions of a complex balance of power, but no time to examine or analyze; down one maze and up another, they noted only a fraction of what they saw, searching for a resonance, a shape looming up to trigger recognition. They shimmered past trillions of bits of information. And they found nothing, no clue whatever. As they surfaced from the top-secret area, Sage was aware of Fredericks' distant eye, watching.
Ramo circled thoughtfully. [Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. We need to think like the core. We need to know what it wanted, what it was after.]
[It may not have known itself. Suppose it didn't make a conscious decision.]
Ramo was silent as they floated over a seemingly endless matrix of gnosys connections. [What was it feeling?] he said suddenly. [During the battle—before it went under.] Ramo focused his entire attention on Sage. [You were with it. How was it reacting? Was it confident? Was it angry? What aspect did it use when it talked to you?]
[Well, I . . .] Sage found the memory replaying in his thoughts, with a slightly different focus. [It was frantic. It was shuffling everything around. I think it was scared. It was afraid that it had done everything wrong, that it was its fault that we were under attack.]
[Was it—I hate to say this—rational?]
[I'm not sure.] Sage tried to recapture the image. He suddenly remembered the core's lament: I cared too much. [It was afraid that it had lost its objectivity. It said that it had taken risks it shouldn't have taken. And it . . . I think it was sorry that it had asked us to give it free will.]
[It couldn't handle the responsibility, so it cleared out.]
[Well . . . unconsciously, maybe.]
Ramo laughed harshly. [So we gave the damn thing a subconscious too? You know, I don't even know what we did to it. Do you?]
[I doubt if we created its subconscious. It was an evolving system, complexity upon complexity. I think we just tapped into it, turned it loose.] As Sage spoke, he became aware of a nearby channel for data from the space-tracking systems. He took a closer look. The Ell were reorganizing their fleet into a ring around the Earth, beyond lunar orbit. If attacked, they could scatter like the wind. And they were in position to strike anywhere on the planet. What were they waiting for? The knot in Sage's stomach tightened.
[It doesn't matter,] Ramo said. [What matters is whether it shut itself down because it thought it was going to be destroyed. Maybe it wanted to be rescued. If it did, it should have left some clue; there should be something about the way it disappeared; and if it had just been talking to you, it may have had you in mind.]
[I don't know,] Sage whispered. [I have no idea.]
[Think! How would the core expect you to find it?]
[I don't know!]
Ramo's impatience was at the bursting point. [How did you get in touch with it before—when you weren't already in rap, how did you let it know you wanted to talk to it?]
Sage blinked in confusion, stammering. [I . . . well, it contacted me . . . through my mother. I mean . . . my mother's cyber . . . ghost. And the core sort of took her over, and—] He paused, thoughts suddenly racing. [So I figured it was monitoring the link to my mother, and when I wanted to reach it . . . jeez, you know, it might be worth a try!]
[Quickly,] Ramo said softly. [Call her. Quickly!]