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THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

“WE’VE GOT TO STOP THEM!” KRISHA SHOUTED, but Gun Roh Chin stayed her.

“Manya was built for a far heavier gravity than we’re used to,” he reminded her, “and this is an even lower gravity zone. There are no weapons. The Mycohl woman will fight her as she’d fight any other human. Just stay out of the way.”

Modra looked over at him, then down at Jimmy, who shrugged. “Not our fight,” he commented, not seeing what he could do in any event.

<Shall I stop them?> Tobrush asked Joseph.

The Mycohl leader shook his head. “It was inevitable anyway. Let it end here.” The odd thing was, even though it was one of his own people involved, he found himself curiously not caring which of them won. Somehow, he thought, if those two manage to kill each other it’ll improve the level of the company in this place immeasurably.

It was a bizarre battle, really. Manya had essentially disappeared, but would occasionally wink in here and there, baiting Kalia, who would lunge for her. Talents weren’t directional; the only advantage telepathy was giving the Mycohlian woman was Manya’s point of view of her, and Kalia was too enraged to make use of it before it was too late. Besides, the only points of reference were the doorway and others near it and that damned monstrous goat-god statue. Most of the views gave only a vague idea of where Manya was moving, and Kalia could but counter and attempt to keep facing the Gnoll until Manya did something. That had placed Kalia entirely on the defensive, and Manya was picking her shots.

Realizing this, Kalia’s rage subsided and she began to think out her moves a bit. Manya was visible when she moved, but she was damned fast for a little lump. The trick was to figure out which way Manya would move next and how far and launch an attack. The trouble was, Manya could also read her mind. When Kalia finally launched herself at where she thought the Gnoll had stopped, Manya had stopped short, and as Kalia approached, the Mizlaplanian swung a clenched fist and caught the Mycohlian right in the stomach. The force of the blow was amazing; Kalia’s face suddenly took on a horrible visage of shock and she actually fell back several meters, almost as if shot, and landed on her back.

Manya wasted no time in capitalizing on the blow, leaping forward and onto the fallen woman, flailing away with her fists. Kalia took the blows, then brought her legs up and did an impossible-looking turn and spin, knocking Manya off and sending the Gnoll onto the floor.

Kalia, though, was in no position to capitalize on her briefly disoriented foe; she was hurt and hurt bad, and knew it. Her eyes darted around, then she ran up the stone steps leading to the altar in front of that hideous goat-god. As Manya got to her feet and started after the wounded Mycohlian, Kalia reached up and took hold of one of the braziers on either side of the altar and pulled. The whole thing came free and suddenly Kalia had a weapon: a long, hard pole with the rounded brazier at the end. She swung it at Manya as the Gnoll reached the top of the stairs, and a tremendous amount of ash and soot flew out and landed all over the floor in front of the altar. The initial swing missed, and as Kalia lifted it and swung again, Manya winked out for a moment, then grabbed the bowl-like end as it approached her head.

Kalia’s reflexes stood her in good stead. Expecting the move, she pushed forward with all her strength and Manya stumbled backward, then over the edge of the stairs, then tumbling down them. Screaming triumph, her pain momentarily blocked by the elation of the success of the move, Kalia raced down, and as Manya was trying to get to her feet the Mycohlian brought the bowl end down on the Gnoll’s head as hard as she could, then again.

The others all watched in amazement, and the demons, perhaps amused, were silent as well, but Molly suddenly got up and, before anyone could stop her, cried out, “No!” and ran for the pair.

Kalia, almost in reaction rather than realizing who was coming toward them and for what purpose, suddenly whirled away from Manya and struck Molly a blow to the head with the brazier, sending the syn backward and knocking her down. She then returned to her victim.

Jimmy McCray was up in a moment and heading toward the fallen Molly. Krisha, angry and frustrated, had to be restrained by the captain from going to Manya’s aid. “There’s nothing you can do but wind up like that poor creature!” he told her sharply.

Molly seemed groggy and shook her head, then got to her knees and reached up and felt her scalp where she’d been hit. Her hand came away with blood on it.

Jimmy got to her. “Molly! Are you all right?”

“I—dunno, Jimmy . . . ” she managed, seeming totally dazed, but she pushed him away and tried to get up on her own by pushing off with her hands. The moment the hand with the blood on it touched the pentagonal tile, the tile seemed to come alive and take on a dull, pale white glow.

Gun Roh Chin saw it from many meters away, although Jimmy hadn’t noticed. “McCray!” the captain shouted. “Don’t let her stand up completely in that tile! Get her off there! Get her off quick!”

Jimmy was momentarily confused. “Huh? What?” If he could have read the null’s mind, he would have understood and acted instantly, but, as it was, he didn’t see it until Molly had gotten completely to her feet.

The border of the tile suddenly glowed crimson, and a wave of visible energy shot from it and enveloped the syn.

“What the hell . . . ?” Jimmy McCray said, startled.

Somewhere he heard a demon say, <Take the Mizlaplanian to the altar. The altar. Finish her on the altar.>

Manya was battered and bloodied, and certainly unconscious, but still alive. Kalia paused, frowned, then made a sudden decision, put down her weapon, and tried to pick Manya up. It was like trying to lift the giant statue. Manya seemed made of lead.

Suddenly Molly emerged from the glow radiating upward from the pentagram block and walked slowly, hesitantly, toward the end of the altar where Kalia was still attempting to lift the unconscious Gnoll. Jimmy tried to shout and go after her, but something seemed suddenly to have hold of him, freezing him, shutting him out not only from action but even from telepathic contact. Some of the others made moves toward the altar as well and found themselves equally bound, helpless onlookers at the strange spectacle, not knowing what was coming next but unable to act in any way to influence it.

<You are no longer players in this game,> a demon voice came to them, seeming somehow calm and unnervingly in control.

Molly seemed awkward, unsure of herself, and nearly stumbled more than once, her actions jerky, almost reminding Jimmy of the cymol Tris Lankur after his human veneer had been shorted out. Now, however, the syn made it to Kalia, who let go of Manya and turned, looking puzzled, at the blue girl with the cloven hooves, but, unlike the first time, the Mycohlian made no move to strike Molly or keep her away, somehow sensing the difference inside the syn this time.

Molly bent down and grabbed Manya’s legs. Kalia immediately saw that help was being offered and got under the Gnoll’s shoulders and lifted. Slowly, carefully, and with a lot of effort in spite of the help, they carried Manya up the stairs and got the limp form onto the altar stone itself.

Somehow, all the onlookers sensed that everything up to this point had been preliminary; now, at this moment, all of the trials and travails, all the deaths and all the manipulations by the demons and the other teams, had come down to Kalia. Whoever or whatever had possessed Molly would do the demon princes’ bidding; the others were locked out. Kalia alone now had free will.

Kalia, too, seemed aware of it, drained almost totally of her rage at this point, trying to figure out just what the hell was going on here.

She knew what she was supposed to do; at least, she knew what the demon princes wanted her to do. Almost as if in a dream she walked back down and picked up the pole with the brazier atop, her killer weapon, and came back up the stairs with it.

<There is a soft spot behind the mammary, approximately three centimeters down from the center of the neck,> a demon prince told her, in that same calm, measured voice.

Kalia reached down, felt beneath the massive single breast of the Gnoll, and found it with no trouble. It was a remarkable weak point in a body otherwise covered by an incredibly thick, tough skin and a lot of interior bony plates, but it wasn’t something she was going to penetrate and really do harm with using just her fingers. She looked at the pole supporting the brazier bowl, took it, and with all her strength brought the pole down on the edge of the altar. It snapped, and when she pulled the two sections apart, there was a sufficiently jagged point to do the job on the pole end. She discarded the brazier itself, which landed with a clang and rolled to within a meter of the frozen Jimmy McCray before stopping.

Manya moaned and stirred; it was an eerie break in the near deathly silence of the temple, and put additional pressure on Kalia. If the Gnoll came to, the fight would start all over again, and, this time, who knew if she’d be so lucky? Now was the time. Now or never. She pulled back the huge, flattened breast, found the spot, then raised the jury-rigged spear as if to bring it down . . . and stopped.

“This’ll spring you, won’t it?” she shouted, her voice echoing around the hall.

<It is the first and necessary step in a process, > the demons admitted. <Do it now, and when we are free you shall become our high priestess, above all others; a goddess with power such as you never dreamed. Do it now, for she is coming around, and if she comes around it will be too late and you will die. Make no mistake—we always keep our word. Do it now and become homo superior, the great, immortal, powerful one. Do it now, or, no matter what happens after, you will die.>

She raised the spear again, but again she hesitated. “Yeah? I saw them bodies back in that first place, and I felt the agony of them whatevers in the hot place, and I heard the screams and moans. I only got your word you keep your promises. The only thing I know for sure is if you’re still locked up you can’t eat me!”

“That is true,” responded a new, deep, inhuman voice that sent chills through them all. “But if you do not do it, then I will ensure that your torment is eternal and sufficiently ugly to make it the stuff of legends!”

She looked up, shocked as much by the voice itself as by the fact that it was speaking in her own native tongue and dialect.

The demon looked far more impressive, more powerful, even regal, when not imprisoned in hard transparent material. Its bearing, its sense of life made it seem awesome.

“Yeah? Where the hell did you come from? And why can’t you do it yourself?” she shot back, not nearly as confident as her tone indicated. And, almost as soon as she’d asked the questions, she knew the answers. This was one of the original demons freed by the Exchange, and who had most likely been shadowing them all along. As to the other question—she was Mycohl, the Gnoll was Mizlaplanian, and the syn was of the Exchange. Another three-way lock, to be opened only by common consent, but not by mere touching.

By blood.

That was one hell of a lock! she thought, amazed at the picture it implied.

Manya stirred, and her eyes seemed to flutter. Her face was a bloody mess, but it was regaining animation, and it would be mere moments now before, Kalia knew, the Gnoll would be awake and uncontrollable. She might well take on the Mizzle again, but with that damned demon standing right there in the doorway there was no way she would take the two of them.

Manya’s eyes opened, and then suddenly grew wide with terror as, for her last sight, she saw the jagged edge of the pole come down and felt it penetrate. She screamed horribly, in the most intense pain, and jerked up so violently that for a moment Kalia was afraid she was going to get up and pull out the stake, but then dark, brown blood erupted from her mouth and she gasped, stiffened, and fell back, limp.

There was a sudden, hollow rumbling beneath them, almost like an earthquake far below, or, more ominously, the sound of something impossibly large stirring in some subterranean chamber, awakening to new life.

Molly suddenly reached out and grabbed Kalia’s right wrist, then, with a sharp fingernail, she cut a small slit on the wrist that drew blood. Molly’s own head wound had clotted long before, so she let go of Kalia and drew the same cut on her own left wrist. Then Molly placed her wrist atop the gaping wound in the dead Manya, so that some of her blood mixed with the brownish goo not yet congealed on the body. Kalia took a deep breath and did the same.

At the instant the last of the blood was mixed, Jimmy McCray and the others felt themselves freed from constraint. Jimmy ran and picked up a handful of ashes that had spilled from the brazier in the fight and ran back to the others, totally ignoring the altar and the freed demon.

“Everybody! Gather in to me! Now!” he shouted aloud, and began as soon as they grouped behind him to use the ash to draw a crude border around them all, praying as he did so that there was enough to make it all the way. Tobrush alone took up as much room as all the rest of them, but he could hardly leave the Julki out. As for the others, they understood immediately what he was doing and made no effort to stop him.

The pentagram was crude, and barely a dark smudge at its last-drawn connecting point, but it was the best he could do.

The noise and rumblings beneath them started anew, and the great hollow rumbling and banging seemed to take on a rhythmic tone, growing louder and louder as time passed. It sounded almost like . . . footsteps! The steps of some impossibly huge, alien beast rising from some dark and dank prison below.

<Don’t look at the altar!> Jimmy warned telepathically, the noise too great for shouting even with this close company. <Whatever you hear, whatever you feel, look away from the altar and keep your eyes closed! If I am correct, what comes is a Power far too great for any mere mortal to withstand!>

One by one, along the four walls of the inner temple, bright shields of the six-pointed Seal of Solomon flashed like beacons, then seemed to melt away; large rectangular panels cracked like sharply struck glass, then crumbled into dust, and from behind and inside stepped the four demon princes.

In the center of the room, behind them, they felt a Presence at the altar unlike anything any of them had felt before. It was neither good nor evil; it was beyond good and evil, beyond anything at all in their experiences. It was Power; Power coupled with a cold, dispassionate, alien intellect as beyond any of them as they were beyond the most elementary one-celled creatures of the universe. So incredibly overwhelming was its presence that Krisha, Modra, Jimmy, and even Tobrush felt their consciousness slipping from them; all their minds were blank, numbed by the pulsing on all bands, and they were frozen now not by force of another’s will but out of their own brains’ inability to cope.

The Presence still ascended, up, beyond the altar, upward to the topmost point of the pyramid, then out into the city beyond. They could still feel it, knew it was outside, waiting, growing even more in power every second, drawing energy from that mass outside, but it was no longer right there, no longer directly in their presence, and consciousness returned. Not a one of them was not shaking uncontrollably, however, from the awe and fear that thing represented.

Jimmy McCray still couldn’t stop his trembling, but he cautiously opened one eye, then the other, and turned to see what had happened.

The demon princes stood there, solid and free, in front of the altar, along with a male and female demon wearing the green cloaks. The four princes, splendid in their gold-trimmed crimson robes and capes, had in truth regal bearings and manners, and appeared at once grander than the mere lesser demons and, somehow, seemed not ugly or brutish but grand, the perfection of their species. They spoke in a tongue that was beyond any of the mortals’ ability to comprehend, and their minds were closed, but clearly all of them were being sent out to meet whatever it was the sacrifice had also freed. Then, suddenly, thoughts became all too intelligible, a gesture that had to be deliberate.

<What of all these lower orders left here, Highness?> the female demon in green asked.

<The girl who freed us comes with us,> one of the princes responded. <We have to keep our bargain. She’s not much, I admit, but she will do. The other one already has all that was promised her. The others are not to be touched for now. We will tend to each at a later time. They are hardly going anyplace. Now, go. The master awaits us, and there is so very much to do.>

<But—why leave them? Why not just let us eat them or sacrifice them to the master?>

The tone of the response was ugly, even dangerous. <You will never question my orders again or they will still speak in hushed tones of your agony in the days when the last sun grows cold! We have plans for them yet.>

The lesser demon bowed humbly. <As you command, sire.>

Now all were gone outside except the one prince, who walked over to them as they stood, still within the exceptionally crude pentagram. He looked at it and them with amusement.

<You should see yourselves!> he commented dryly. <Now I think you begin to comprehend just the barest hint of the powers you have been playing with. Your pathetic attempt to guard against us even here with this crude and meaningless bit of geometry is high comedy.>

“What do you plan to do with us?” Jimmy asked him aloud.

<You have been—unexpected. Valuable for all that. We had not expected anyone to recognize us in theological, rather than mere mythic, ways. Your knowledge, in particular, has been astonishing. That such ancient, primitive faiths built upon ancestral memory would have survived interstellar expansion and cross-racial societies intact is incredible. Our ancient enemies are far more resourceful than we believed.> He suddenly paused, and his great homed head cocked slightly, as if listening to something. Then he added, <I must go. You have free run of the city. We have locked you out of materializing anything but food and drink, but that you now know how to get. Soon this city will live again, but, by then, I or someone else will have returned to tend to you. In the end, all of you will learn to worship and to serve us. All but you, priestess. I have already made a promise to you as to your fate, to wander forever through our new empire, bound by your stupid vows, powerless to affect events. Until later, then—farewell.>

He started to walk away and Gun Roh Chin muttered, “We could still cheat him. They cannot stop us taking our own lives.”

The demon stopped and turned. <To do that, particularly here, would only deliver you to us without effort. But you—most of you—won’t. You are survivors. That is why you got this far.> And, with that, he was gone.

Modra Stryke shook her head in wonder. “This is impossible. Things like this just don’t happen. Not for real. Not in this day and age.”

“They are the distillation of everything that was within everyone who ever gave me orders,” Josef commented. “I always hated them, too.”

“That thing is still outside,” Modra noted with a shiver. “Still, we might as well make ourselves as comfortable as we can in here until it goes.”

“You think it’s safe to leave the protection this early?” Krisha asked, looking nervous and ashen.

Josef shrugged. “He laughed it off anyway. Pathetic, he called it.”

“I’m not sure,” McCray told them. “He never crossed it. The power of authority is great in and of itself, and they lie with total conviction. I doubt if it would even be noticed by their master, but we were irrelevant to him, if, as I doubt, he noticed us at all. But the combination of sounds, geometry, and faith, which gives us a confident power as well if true enough, can stop or at least slow the more conventional creatures. We must remember that the Quintara are but another race of beings. They eat, probably sleep, even go to the bathroom. Their power comes from two external sources—their master, and the knowledge of superior technology and their access to it. And we must never forget that they can be beaten. Even their master was imprisoned in a sense. Thousands of years ago somebody beat them and sealed them away. These are the hordes of the ancient enemy of all races, and their master was that enemy personified.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting that their master is some kind of supernatural entity?” Josef asked, skeptical.

“None other. So powerful that he could only be imprisoned, and, even from prison, could influence and shape events. All our ancestral memories of demons and devils springs from here, from this source.”

“If that is true,” Krisha responded slowly, “then where are the gods?”

“The solution to that question might well be the solution to it all,” he told her. “We still have far too many questions.”

“I agree,” Gun Roh Chin put in. “All along I have been trying to fit the pieces of this puzzle together and still I have far too many pieces that do not fit.”

“How can such as we comprehend the supernatural?” Krisha asked him.

“Because you’ve got to get out of that way of thinking. This is just another problem, the same as all the other problems in all the alien environments all of us have worked within at one time or another. We—Mizlaplanian, Mycohlian, and Exchange combined—are a new arm, a new team, a new unit. For the first time, we are faced not with lesser races but with greater ones. All three empires now stand a good chance of being overrun and conquered just as our individual races were overrun and conquered by the empires. He called us survivors, but we’re better than that! All of us are better than that! We’re fighters!

“We are six helpless prisoners in an alien capital without weapons, without access, reduced to the level of our primitive ancestors,” Josef retorted. “And if we do not figure out a way out of here, we’re no more than victims.”

“I agree that finding a way out is the key, but not to the rest,” the captain replied. “Get out of this cult mentality. I have seen many a world whose culture is so primitive, so undeveloped, its people yet ignorant, who would worship us as gods for the magic our knowledge and technology and experience appears. It’s no different here, but we’re more mature than that.”

“Do you honestly believe we can stand a chance against that thing?” Modra asked him.

“Not by ourselves, no. And we are six against the Quintara hordes. We need help. We know where to go to get that help, I think. They aren’t the only ones with the keys to this knowledge. Someone—their ‘ancient enemy’ they called them—set these locks and walked away. I think we are agreed on who that has to be. But first we must get to them.”

Jimmy McCray looked around the temple. Where Kalia had gone he couldn’t guess; she hadn’t passed them, but she didn’t seem to still be in the temple, either, although it was hard to tell. The mass on the altar was nothing but charred flesh. He spotted Molly’s body, looking unconscious or dead, face down in a far corner. No—not dead. He thought he saw her move.

“They’ve gone,” Modra sighed, and they all felt it. A sudden sense of relief mixed with a flood of emptiness swept through them. They knew they were alone once more.

“I don’t understand what made her do it,” Jimmy muttered.

“The blood on the floor. It allowed one of those presences to come through to our universe and possess her,” Josef responded matter-of-factly. “There’s no mystery there.”

“No, no! McCray’s got a point!” Chin put in. “It wouldn’t do to unlock those prisons if all you needed was to get inside a body. Demonic possession tales are as ancient as legend goes. If they could just have possessed one each from our empires they could have freed themselves at almost any time. The three would have to be true representatives. Otherwise, it’s too easy—and why go through all this?”

“But Molly wouldn’t have done that freely!” Jimmy objected. “She didn’t understand any of this. To freely act you must comprehend your actions!”

Molly groaned, managed to sit up, and shook her head. She gave a sudden gasp, then put her long hands to her face, feeling its contours, going down to her breasts, where she paused, playing her fingers over the nipples for a moment and smiling, and, finally, farther down, until she had felt or explored much of her body. Then she looked over and saw them all still standing there and brightened. “Hey! Jimmy! I’m back!” she called.

It was Molly’s voice, but it wasn’t Molly.

“Who or what are you?” he called back, challenging.

“It’s me, you asshole! I made it! I got my body, and it feels tremendous!

He frowned. “What . . . ? Who . . . ?”

Me, you shithead! Grysta! I’m back!”

<All my life I’ve been taught, and believed on the evidence, that the soul did not exist,> Tobrush commented worriedly. <Science has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the mind and brain are really one. Even in that so-called ‘other plane’ out-of-body experience, it was easy enough to see that we were never anywhere but in our own bodies, that our minds were simply dealing with additional sensory input to which we’d been attuned but which the brain was not equipped to handle or interpolate. It is, therefore, impossible that what claims to be the mind and consciousness, even memories, of the Morgh in the syn’s body can be who it claims. The brain died. Ergo, the mind and memories died as well. That has to be someone, something else, something that lived in that other dimensional set, which telepathically captured and merged with the morgh’s mind and memories before the creature died. That begs the question of who, or what, is really controlling that body, and why.>

“But the syn wasn’t telepathic,” Jimmy reminded the Julki. “She was an empath, yes, but of strictly limited design and range. She couldn’t even get in to perceive that other dimension. You tried to read her mind—so did I. She was limited, even retarded. How could something merge with or enter her?”

<That,> responded Tobrush, <is something we very much need to know.>

“I feel like a damned specimen in a lab jar,” Grysta, or whoever it was, complained.

The “new” Grysta had all the same attributes as they had, but her blocking on all levels was superb, beyond any of their abilities. She could and did open up to them, but that didn’t solve the problem, since only she would know how open she really was and what was concealed beyond their notice.

“What happened to Molly?” Jimmy asked her.

“Oh, she’s still here, sort of. All that was Molly, such as it was, is a part of me. She didn’t mind! I don’t think she minded nothin’. What a waste this body was with her! I’ll put it to better use!”

McCray decided that the only way to get information was to deal with her as if she were just who she claimed to be.

“You died, Grysta. Don’t you understand that?”

“I didn’t die, Jimmy. I told you I wouldn’t. That I would make it.”

“I saw the other plane’s access to this city. The entities were crowded around it, the opening too small to keep out of their grasp. Nobody could have made it.”

“Yeah? Well I did,” she responded smugly. “I was just goin’ too fast for ’em, and, besides, I really wanted to make it.”

Gun Roh Chin came over and joined the conversation.

He’d been deep in thought, and now the conclusions he was reaching were dependent entirely on Grysta’s credibility.

“What happened once your consciousness made it through?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “I was suddenly floating in this huge sea, or somethin’ like a sea, I guess. There was lots and lots of others around—not them dark creatures, neither. I can’t really explain it. Then, suddenly, this big darkness, like a kind of liquid creature, came up and they all scattered. I didn’t know where to scatter to, so I just tried to get outta its way but it stopped and then it talked to me. That was the scariest part. That thing was so powerful and so cold. I knew it was a god, but I also knew it didn’t give a shit about me and that it could just knock me into nothingness without even a thought. Instead, though, it talked. It talked deal.”

Chin nodded. “It offered you a real body, a new life—Molly’s life—if you would do what it told you to do.”

“Yeah! That’s it exactly! It told me almost a hundred percent correct what would happen. Just who the other two would be wasn’t real clear, but it wasn’t no surprise when I saw ’em. It said that, with you all in here, it could sort’a arrange things to happen, but it couldn’t make us spill blood on the big stone. It said I was to get the one that was dying to the stone while she was still alive and after the other one killed her I was to mix a little of Molly’s blood with hers and the dead one’s. If I did that, there was no other strings. I could keep the body and live a real, independent life. Feel things firsthand, see things firsthand, pick up and touch things, talk direct like I’m doin’ now. It said the body don’t get sick, don’t age, and might last centuries. Centuries! How could I tell it no? Particularly when I knew, really knew, that this thing, like, owned me at that point, that I was at its mercy unless I got out and did what it said.”

The captain nodded again. “It makes sense. They needed an entity with free will from the Exchange to complete the circuit, as it were. Molly wouldn’t do. There was nothing they could offer her.”

Jimmy McCray stared at Chin. “You think it’s possible that this really is Grysta? That somebody, anybody, could have made it through? You didn’t see how narrow that passage was.”

“It was irrelevant. If this master of the Quintara is who or what you believe it is, then it is also the leader of whatever lives within that other plane. It could simply have ordered that she come through.”

“But how could it have known that everything would take place here as it did?”

“You’re too naive for this work. We were manipulated. Even imprisoned, the first set of demons we encountered were incredibly powerful. My late comrade and friend Morok would have understood, and Josef, there, as well. The Quintara are telepathic beyond your powers to withstand; they are empathic in both directions to a degree that they could overwhelm and manipulate other empaths. We are conditioned against multiple talents, but you have them yourself now. The ordination and binding of priests in the Mizlaplan is done with a hypnotic power that is so strong it overwhelms any of us. We were manipulated, probably by those first two demons whose tracks started us on this path. Put through a series of tests and trials to determine the best combination for success. We were so busy fighting each other we hardly noticed or gave it a thought. All to winnow out those who might interfere, and those who were unnecessary, to hone us and the odds in their favor.”

<So many variables.> Tobrush objected. <It’s not possible!>

Jimmy McCray sighed. “Not possible for us, perhaps, but there is a good reason for all our ancient beliefs and rituals and practices, and we have a word for them: diabolical.

“What minds they must have!” Modra exclaimed.

“Indeed,” Chin agreed. “Imagine agreeing when caught with the knives in their hands to being locked away for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of years, until you feel your enemies have weakened and even true belief in you, let alone knowledge of some of their limitations, has died out. It’s a monstrous, fiendish plot worthy of their reputation. An entire race, willing to suspend their civilization, their very lives, until they have outlived their enemies. Still, they missed their mark. Descendants, at least, of those ancient enemies still live and rule, and not all the ancient knowledge is lost because the empires have grown so enormous that native cultures in many cases, particularly in the Exchange, remain well preserved. Perhaps that was the plan. The Exchange preserved the ancient cultures; the Mizlaplan created a bulwark, a holy overculture who knew the enemy and would raise the alarm in unison should that enemy reappear, while the Mycohl could provide the shock troops as hardened and fierce as the Quintara themselves.” He sighed. “Come—let’s use this mechanism to feed ourselves and quench our thirst. Then it will be time to explore options.”

The system did work, delighting Grysta, but when they tried it for anything other than sustenance it ignored them, as the demon prince had said. In a way, Gun Roh Chin felt reassured by that. “It’s just a machine after all,” he told them.

Modra went over to Krisha, who had been uncharacteristically silent during this ordeal. The priestess looked wan and shaken, even a bit frightened. They all had that fear, but this was unusual in the normally self-assured young woman.

“It’s taking its toll on all of us,” Modra said sympathetically.

“No, it’s not that. They can see into the darkest corners of your mind, where even we do not look within ourselves. That is the heart of their power. That prince, when he spoke of me, allowed me and me alone to see a vision of what he had in mind for me.”

“Yeah, they’re good at scaring you.”

“I saw myself on my native world, only then under their rule. Dirty, naked as now, like some animal, yet protected from harm by others by some sign burned into my forehead. Consumed with lusts yet bound absolutely by my vows, rooting in the garbage for food, unable to control my bowels and thus condemned to filth, my talent turned so that all could hear my innermost thoughts yet I could hear none of theirs, an object lesson to others, scorned and derided by all who came upon me. Never growing old, never getting sick, never even allowed the luxury of madness.” She shivered. “And knowing in that vision—absolutely knowing—that he could do all that to me any time he chose.”

Modra gave her a sympathetic hug. “That’s the way they think, and the way they get you to freely obey their every whim. They get a charge out of it. They see us only as food, pets, and toys.” She thought a moment. “That mark that would protect you—can you remember what it looked like? If it’s for real it might give us safe conduct out of here.”

Krisha shook her head from side to side. “No. I knew it was there, of course, but the brief vision was from my point of view. Because it was on my forehead, I think, I could not see it.”

Modra sighed. “Too bad. It would have been a handy thing to know.”

Gun Roh Chin drew very close to Jimmy McCray. The little man was watching Molly—or Grysta, or whoever it was—eat with such wonderment that it seemed almost unreal. If it was Grysta, it would be the first time she’d ever tasted anything in the conventional sense.

“Well? Is it Grysta and only Grysta or not?” Chin whispered to him.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy answered in the same low tone. “She sure acts like Grysta would act, and she talks a good line. But—who can tell? Molly’s brain was designed with limits, but this one seems to have none that we ourselves don’t share. Could they have actually reworked the body, even the brain, inside?”

“They could,” the captain told him. “The body was totally within the energy field and the adjustments would probably be rather minor. Since the body was synthetic anyway, it was probably easy for such a computer as this to analyze. The real question is the one Tobrush poses—if indeed that is Grysta in there, it implies something enormous. That not only our essences, our souls, survive the death of the body, but our consciousness, even our personalities, as well. At least a power that could read out, capture, hold, and reinsert that at will.”

Jimmy McCray stared at the captain, bemused. “You represent a theocracy and you don’t believe in the soul?”

“Not like that. Not as a unitary, unchanged consciousness as if in the body.”

“Oh, yes—that’s right. Yours is a reincarnation for perfection and punishment system. That, however, doesn’t allow for deals with the devil. If that’s not Grysta, it’s an impervious imitation.”

“Would you bet your life, and perhaps your immortal soul if it truly exists, on that?”

McCray was suddenly interested. “Why? What do you have in mind?”

“We need a station. If there is one here in the same sense as the others, it’ll be closed to us and certainly guarded by demons who don’t need our help. That means going back up through the garden, which, I think, isn’t something we are all likely to survive considering the price paid to get in here in the first place and eventually facing us with the same problem of the liberated guards.”

“It’s academic anyway. Even without the problem of the fire level and the wall-to-wall demon horde in the switching station, we’d have no food, nothing to sustain us. Impossible.”

“I’m not at all certain we have to retrace our steps. However, we would certainly have to get past the demigods in the garden. The first gate I’m not sure is relevant—those guards were a projection. The important thing would be getting back to that cavern of the crystals. As I say, unlikely that we’d get that far, but it’s a last-ditch attempt. That leaves the other, even riskier idea.”

“Yes?”

“If that is your Grysta, and she got in, maybe some could get out the same way.”

“By dying? We weren’t talking bodies by that route, you know.”

“I said it was risky.”

“It’s suicide!”

“Remaining here is worse than that.”

Modra came over and joined them. “That big bastard really screwed up Krisha. Damn! They know how to get to you, don’t they?”

Jimmy nodded. “They’ve kept in practice through surrogates over the years. I think that, even imprisoned, they could be summoned by their cults and the stupid via the mental dimension. It explains a lot. Uh—the captain here has been proposing that we all jump into that big pool of nothing out there and see what happens.”

“It may come to that,” she admitted. “Still, Krisha’s vision had her under a terrible curse, wandering around naked, yet with some mark on her forehead that told everyone instantly to leave her alone. She doesn’t know what the mark was, but if we could find out . . . ”

Gun Roh Chin brightened. “Yes! A safe conduct! But—he never showed her what the mark was?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

Jimmy McCray thought a moment. “I might have an idea, but the only way to test it out would be for someone to actually try it in harm’s way, and, if I’m wrong, it’s curtains. Hell, I might even be right and still blow it.”

They were interested. “Go ahead.”

“The Number of the Beast—three sixes. But that was written in the second century after Christ, and probably in Greek. I seriously doubt that it’s a real number at this point. More likely a symbol, possibly in the written Quintara script. Something that looked like three sixes to a second-century monk writing in Greek. It might have been expressed in Hebrew, since he was a religious writer, or Roman, although that seems pretty awkward, or even Aramaic, of which I know next to nothing.”

“Tris would have known Aramaic,” Modra commented softly. “It was his native tongue.”

Jimmy didn’t even hear. “Too early for the Arabic system, which would be the easiest . . . ”He sighed. “Damn it, we need some sample of the Quintara alphabet! Then I could compare whatever squiggles they use to the numbering systems known to a second-century Christian mystic!”

Modra was excited. “We don’t know how much time we’ve got, but we’ve got a whole damned city here. Somewhere here somebody must have built a statue to somebody or stuck inscriptions around.”

The others were all crowded around now, interested in doing something, anything, rather than just sitting and waiting.

“It’s better than sitting here,” Josef commented. “The problem is, I know nothing of any of those tongues.”

<You are too anxious,> Tobrush cautioned. <What difference can it make? There is no station here, and to get back to a true station would mean going back through the water world without provisions and the fire world without environment suits, and in any case it wouldn’t fool the Quintara or any other telepath.>

Modra told the captain what was said, and he nodded. “True enough, but it might be an automatic system. If you were one of the Quintara, and you’d been imprisoned, half-alive, for countless centuries, would you stick around if you were freed? That first station was essentially automated. I think they all are. Ask yourself why such a telepathic race should even need a mark of safety for its people. The only logical answer is to allow them free use of automated equipment. And don’t be so certain there’s no station here. If they’ve gone, they’ve gone by a route we, too, can use. For all their power, the Quintara are flesh and blood, as we are. The odds are they even need toilets, although we haven’t seen one as yet. Those stations are there for them. They need them.”

“He’s right!” Modra cried, feeling sudden hope. “If we can just find the mark . . . ”

“And if they are truly gone from the city,” Jimmy added.

“Let’s go see,” the captain replied.

They all walked back outside, feeling as they exited a certain relief at open air, however static, after the pyramid’s close and dangerous theatrics.

“As cold and dead as ever,” Josef remarked.

“Aye, but for how long?” Jimmy responded, looking around. “The big boss and his local chiefs are free, and it’s only a matter of time until they fully satisfy themselves of the condition of things and unlock the others. They may be doing that right now with your turncoat providing the hand to break the seals they can’t touch. How many do you wager were in that transfer station, just moments from all those stations to God knows where? Hundreds? Thousands?”

They had completely forgotten Grysta, or whoever it was in Molly’s body pretending to be her. She’d followed them out, silently, but now she said, “Jimmy . . . ”

“Shut up, Grysta!” he snapped angrily, amazed even now that he’d ever uttered those words again. “You’ve done quiet enough damage for one day. Millions, perhaps billions, of creatures across all three empires will suffer horribly and maybe die or wish they could because you added the blue to their grisly red and gold combination.”

“Jimmy—I—I didn’t know. I still don’t know what all this is about. Besides, I wasn’t the one who did it—I was just there, that’s all.”

He turned and looked at her acidly. “Grysta, no matter what, they couldn’t have done it without you.”

She shook her head sadly. “I—I dunno. I thought everybody’d be glad I made it. It was what was supposed to happen. And none of you faced either doin’ that or spending eternity as a nothin’ in a whirling storm of nothin’ else. That Mycohl bitch—she walked in with you, and she did it free and clear. Looked real happy, too—even if her ugly face did get scratched up.”

Gun Roh Chin turned toward her. “You saw her? After? And maybe you saw that—that thing, too?”

“No, I never looked at him. I mean, I met him, sort of, in the nothin’ and I didn’t want to meet him for real, so when Jimmy yelled for everybody to close their eyes and not look, I got over to the wall and shut my eyes, too. But when I felt him leave—kind’a straight up, like goin’ out the point in that thing, real weird—I peeked. She was walkin’ out tall and whole, like she hadn’t been in a fight at all, between two of them demons. She looked, well, almost pretty, like all those scars were goin’ away, and strong, too. The only sign she’d been in a fight were three bright red scratches on her forehead.”

Jimmy McCray was suddenly more interested. “Scratches?”

“Uh-huh. Right in the middle of her forehead. Like somebody’d ripped nails straight down.”

Jimmy put three fingers at his hairline and moved them down to between his eyebrows. “Like that?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Just like that.”

“Is that important? Scratches?” the captain asked him.

“It could be, if they weren’t scratches at all,” Jimmy responded. “It’s Hebrew! Vav, vav, vav—six, six, six. In Hebrew the letters are also the numbers. It’s usually written as a simple straight line. Old Saint John of Patmos did see followers of the Quintara! For two thousand years folks have been trying to use numerology to figure out who he was talking about and proving almost everything, and it’s none of them. It has to be! Simple enough for anyone who had as much as charcoal or perhaps even mud to do, but arcane enough that nobody would take it for what it was!”

<Too simple,> Krisha put in, understanding that Grysta had Molly’s old empathic skills but not the full panoply the others had, thanks to the limitations the makers put into that syn body. <Can you trust her? Or is this merely another stage in torment?>

<Even if that is truly Grysta in there and she’s been telling the absolute truth I couldn’t trust her,> Jimmy responded honestly. <She always has had her own agenda and it’s rarely tied to anyone else’s, and she doesn’t even have to live through me any more.>

<Even that is suspect,> Tobrush noted. <How do we know that she wasn’t led astray by them just to keep us occupied? Or feed us false information you would be certain to recognize just to raise our hopes before feeding us to the creatures of the other plane?>

“There’s only one way to prove the thesis and also bear out another needed fact,” the captain said, guessing the exchanges going on. “One of us has to put these lines on our forehead, walk back up that bridge to the garden, and see if the idols there let him pass. If they do, it’s for real, and he can also check to see if there is any sign our friends exited that way, in which case there is no station here. If not—then we have a way out.”

Instantly the others thought of the sight of Morok attempting to cross the barrier and being engulfed in energy.

“Are you volunteering to be the test subject?” Josef asked him, a little nervous. None of this mumbo-jumbo made any sense to him at all.

“No!” Krisha cried. “You can’t!”

Gun Roh Chin smiled. “I must. They read minds, remember. We’re talking sentient beings of some sort there, able to exercise influence in this dimensional set through those idols. McCray must apply the marks on my forehead with whatever we can find, and I must go up there, alone, and see. I assure you I don’t relish climbing back up that far with as little rest as I’ve had, but I have a feeling that the master clock is ticking fast.”

“I won’t let you!” she exclaimed, sounding near hysteria. “You’re all I’ve got!”

He looked at her, suppressing the incredible pity he felt for her as always. “It’s better this way. If I remain here, my fate will most certainly be horrible. If worse comes to worst, jump into that mass out there. You will at least escape them, and you might find a way out on that plane, somehow. I cannot sense that plane at all, and I have no illusions about what sort of persuasions they can use to bend me to them, or, at best, eat me alive, a little at a time. I have no wish to do either. Either I get out before they return or I die quickly and cleanly.”

She could not refute the logic. “Then let me come with you!”

“They’d know the trick in an instant from your own mind,” he told her. “No, let’s do it, and quickly. I’ll go, and the rest of you search for something that might be a station and then meet back at this great common. If I succeed, I will join you. If I fail, try other means.”

The others nodded. “And how long do we wait?” Modra asked him. “There’s no day or night, and my clock is in my other suit.”

He gave a wry smile. “Wait until something happens. Then wait no more.”

Jimmy McCray went back in the temple and found more of the thick, oil-soaked black soot and used that to paint three even vertical lines on Chin’s forehead. After, the captain went over to Krisha and said, softly, “You must have courage no matter what. Until now, you have faced banal evil and clever evil but never before pure evil. You must cast out doubt and suppress fear. You cannot beat these creatures with guns or talents; you can beat them only with faith, and faith is more courage than anything else. I do not intend to die, but rather get out of here and fight them. If I do die, however, you must fight all the harder to make my death, and all the deaths that came before, of our friends and beloved comrades, have meaning. They are very good at what they do. Be better.”

“I—I don’t know if I’m the one for that,” she responded honestly.

“You can be. If you have faith, in yourself and in higher powers, they can only kill you. The rest, the nightmare life, damnation, they can only do if you help, and take it upon yourself. One of the Mizlaplan must get back and report. One of the Mizlaplan must alert the Holy Angels before the horror truly begins. Only they hold the key to this.” He paused a moment, then gave her a confident-looking smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. The most I fear right now is that I shall be so tired I’ll fall off the bridge.” He took her hand, kissed it, then looked at her, winked, and walked off, so straight and noble, back into the city.

He didn’t slump and slow down until he was certain he was out of her sight.



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