IT WAS THEIR THIRD NIGHT ON THE NEW WORLD, and time for reflection.
The air was sweet and normal, with considerably more oxygen than they were used to, giving them all a slight feeling of light-headedness which they were now getting over, but, although it hadn’t rained, the very high humidity that felt like a thick blanket made the danger of fire minimal.
The water tasted high in minerals but it was good water, and Tobrush provided needed confirmation of some of the plants by showing that a Julki was not just a biological chemical synthesizer but a natural analyst as well. By ingesting a tiny part of organic matter through two hollow tendrils and sticking it somewhere in a compartment inside its body, it was able to give a basic breakdown of what was in the things and at least a guess as to what was or wasn’t edible. None of it tasted like much, but much of it was edible by the Terrans and it at least allowed them to fill their bellies.
As for Tobrush, it found some ugly creepy-crawlies in the woods, metallic blue in color, with cauliflower-like bodies and masses of feelers that kind of slid along the forest floor and clung to the trees, and discovered that they were acceptable to the Julki constitution, although the Terrans were cautioned not to try them—as if any of them had any such inclinations after looking at one of the things.
The food, or water, or whatever had, however, given all the Terrans bad gas and diarrhea, which seemed not serious or life-threatening but definitely had kept them from considering other options for a while. Now, however, it seemed to have finally eased up as their systems adjusted to the unfamiliar but chemically correct food.
Josef had tended to distance himself from his old companion and comrade; the fact that Tobrush was one of the Hidden Ones wasn’t easy to take, and Josef shared the fear of all citizens of the Mycohl that a Hidden One could, at any time, inject anyone of any race with its microbial self and take over the body. The fact that Tobrush still talked and acted like Tobrush was no comfort; none of them harbored any doubt that they were reading only the natural actor’s persona the Mycohl master wanted them to have, and that, underneath and untouchable by such as they, was a totally different, totally alien presence.
Jimmy felt that as well. He’d seen likable Tris Lankur, a regular fellow and pilot, unmasked as something inexplicable and inhuman already. He had no desire to get below the Mycohlian’s surface, but he had no illusions about how that totally different parasitic life form really regarded them. Certainly not as equals; rather, most likely, as intelligent and useful pets, in the way a hunter regarded his dogs.
This was a representative of a life form as ancient and as powerful as the Quintara, and the empire its people had created was, at least to those of the other empires, rather demon-like itself.
Jimmy McCray had taken mostly to lying in the grass, shield fully up, and just thinking about things, well away from the others. It was, oddly, the lack of pressure that was bothering him. All of them felt it; as if the weight of the world and the threat of instant death or eternal torture had been suddenly taken away, along with all responsibilities and cares. Krisha, Modra, and, oddly, even Josef seemed to be happy just to remain here, at least, they all told themselves, just a little while longer, particularly now that their digestive systems weren’t in revolt. And they had needed the rest, and deserved it, after what they’d all been through.
Grysta approached him as he sat there, looking up at the immense starfield that appeared in this world’s night sky, and he barely looked around.
By now he was pretty certain that Grysta was in fact Grysta; that, somehow, she coexisted in that brain with poor little Molly. If, indeed, that other plane was the plane of the soul, who was to say that what Grysta claimed wasn’t true? Under his Church’s doctrine a syn was a machine, and machines had no souls. In that case, there was certainly room, and perhaps Molly’d been given a sort of immortality by the move, although the price had been much, much too high.
“Jimmy? We gotta get out of here,” Grysta said with a sigh.
“Huh? What?”
“I said we got to get out, that’s all. I been keepin’ Josef happy but that won’t last. I know he’s got eyes for both the other girls, and that nutty ex-priestess is irresistible. And Modra, she’s maybe sick. She actually had some blood come outta her crotch today and she’s real upset by it.”
That got him interested. “Hmph! I hadn’t thought of that, nor she, either, I bet. That’s not any illness, though, Grysta. When she got married she probably had her reproductive system turned back on and limited it with a skin patch for the duration of our so-called last job together. Now the patch is wearing off and a replacement is—God knows where, out there, somewhere.”
“Repro—you mean it’s part of the Terran baby-makin’ system? Blood? Yuk! She gonna make a baby or something now?”
“Not unless Josef gets to her, but she could have a rough and messy couple of days. I don’t wonder she’s upset by it.”
“Jeez! Then what about me and the other girl?”
He chuckled. “You don’t have to worry. Your body’s not designed for it. And Krisha—well, I think they made that impossible when she was ordained, if I remember right.”
“Jimmy—I can’t read minds, but I got the real strong impression that Josef has this real fantasy of setting off in the wilderness, just him and three women, all hypnoed and his adoring slaves. You watch your back.”
He smiled grimly. “A telepath always watches his back. I know his thoughts as soon as he knows them, and I know his fantasies, too. Typical hypno, really, particularly from his sort of culture, although I suspect one from ours would be just the same in this sort of situation. His one problem is Tobrush. He can’t get around that and he can’t really get away here any more than he could back where he came from, and Tobrush knows our job is not only unfinished, it’s not even fully begun.”
“Yeah, but, like somebody said, they must know back in the Empires that the Quintara are loose. They gotta!”
“I’m sure of that,” he agreed, “but I’m not at all sure, particularly now, if they know just what that means. Tobrush is the best example. He’s one of the very ones we’re counting on, and he admits he didn’t know any more about this than we do. What if it’s been too long? What if it’s been forgotten? I keep wondering about the old times in my own race, after the explosion of science but before interstellar flight, and what would have happened if we’d discovered a devil in amber. Only the so-called ignorant would have feared it. The others would have acted like our scientists did on that frontier world. They’d have poked and probed and measured and all that and even freed it eventually, and the rationalists who would head such expeditions would not believe in the real danger, but only in terms of more tangible dangers such as when facing a wild beast or an enemy soldier, no matter what the legends. After thousands of years, perhaps the Quintara are mere legends to the Higher Races now. Two demon-like creatures were broken out of suspension capsules, awakened, killed everybody, and somehow got away. A tragedy for science, perhaps, but only a local danger. Ten to one that they’re not only not preparing for war, they’re sparing no exploration effort to find more crystals. Damn them! This is one time when being smarter and more powerful shields them from the truth!”
“So, like I said, we gotta get out of here, right? I kind’a feel responsible for all this. I want to do what I can, if you just tell me what to do.”
He sighed. “I wish I knew. I really do. But this is one time when the old captain blew it. We just went through to another local destination and that’s that. Some world maybe further out, past the frontier, like the one they discovered.” He suddenly stopped and sat up straight. “Holy Mother of God!”
“You all right, Jimmy?” Grysta asked, concerned.
He snapped his fingers. “Sure! Look up there, Grysta, and tell me what you see?”
She frowned and looked up at the sky where he was pointing. “A big bunch of stars?”
“Stars! At all the descending stages to the city we passed through regions that sort of looked like worlds but had no day, no night, no stars, no sun. We went down a number of levels to get there, and they all had that in common! But, when we exited the city, we came immediately to a world that could support us, with sun and stars and all the rest. We are out! It did work, just like the old boy said it would!”
“Uh—Jimmy . . . This ain’t where we came in.”
“No, of course not. Think of the capital city, where we lived. You get there, having never been there before, and you get a robocab and you say, ‘Take me to Jimmy McCray’s flat.’ ”
“Yeah? So?”
“Well, there are a million million flats in that city, and a mere cab doesn’t have the kind of database access to do that. There are privacy laws, for one thing. So the cab asks for more specific directions, and you reply that you only know it’s a one-bedroom standard flat on the third floor and you insist the cab take you there. So, what does it do? It takes you to the first block of flats with three or more floors that have one-bedroom flats!”
She frowned a moment, then brightened. “Oh, I see! So then you tell it that it isn’t right, so it goes to the next block, and the next, and so on.”
“Exactly. A system this sophisticated would require uniformly specific instructions. Not the place we came in at, which it wouldn’t know, but precisely which world in the network. Nor would it know the politics or new structures or anything of the sort. We gave it a set of pictures from which it could only extract a warm, tree-filled world that could support our kinds, so it sent us to the first one on the list!”
“Um—yeah, but—that cab you talked about? There’s zillions of blocks of flats like that in the city. You could take months to find the right one, one at a time, unless you were real, real lucky.”
He nodded. “And that means we can’t go back there. Not directly. I’m tempted to try for the plain one, the one with the rather bizarre ‘Do not enter’ sign, but there might be a number of them like that. Damn. We really do need the captain now! We had the proper star maps for Rainbow Bridge, wherever that is. He had to interpret and program the location from fixes by their military. He’s the only one who actually knew the true location well enough to be specific.”
“What about Josef? He was captain and he got there.”
“By following the Mizlaplanians, not by independent coordinates. I already plumbed his mind for that.” He sighed. “Even then, it might not matter. They probably have their own coordinate system, as easy as giving an address.”
<Nevertheless, your theory is the first ray of hope out of this morass,> came Tobrush’s comments in his mind.
<You were listening!>
<I am listening to all of you. Your shields are not much of a barrier to me.>
He hadn’t thought of that wrinkle. They were as wide open to the Mycohl master as Krisha was to the rest of them. It was a most unsettling thought for a telepath.
<What’s the difference? If it’s strictly trial and error we’re much more likely to run into a batch of Quintara than we are to luck into the right exit,> he noted.
<Perhaps. Perhaps not. I keep going over the contents of the Mizlaplanian’s mind. Captain Chin once told her that the only way was to return to the chamber where the crystals grow. He seemed to believe that part of the answer lay there.>
<And do what? Go back into that ugly other plane with those monstrosities there trying to engulf us? Reach the pool in the city again in mental form and get trapped there until that creature discovers us? We can’t get out of there any other way. The fire world is between us, and, even if it wasn’t, it would take a week or more to walk back out without food and in some cases without water.>
<I have been considering that. At the very least, it would prove your theory. I sincerely doubt if there is more than one place where these crystals grow. If we reach it, we prove the thing works.>
<Okay, granted. But if we reach it, we’ll probably find ourselves neck deep in Quintara. Or, say we don’t. Then what?>
<Perhaps we can use it to find a destination. Has it not occurred to you that in all cases we have gone left to descend, as it were? Even in the visions of the other plane we went towards the city, which is where we wanted to go. Suppose this time we go against the stream?>
“Against the stream?” he said aloud.
“Huh? You say something?” Grysta asked.
“I’m talking to Tobrush. Hold on.” <What about right here? What about going right from the station back there?>
<I doubt if it will work. This is, as you noted, in the universe that we know. It is an end point.>
<The others weren’t in the universe we know?>
<I think not. It is too simplistic to think of them as levels inside that first world. Clearly that is absurd. But neither do I believe that they are real worlds. As you yourself noted, they had no day, no night, and did not really vary.>
He was fascinated, and he knew that the Mycohl had to have an intelligence well beyond his own, or even the captain, who’d made similar comments. <So, if they aren’t worlds, what are they?>
<Templates. Templates for worlds. Perhaps even breeding and experimental labs as well, but compartments nonetheless in some vast enclosure. The place where all the demons were—a service corridor running between. >
<Templates? Compartments? You speak like it’s some kind of spaceship, like that big lab ship orbiting the first world.>
<I think it might be something like that. Where? Who can say? We travel via the crystals through a physics that some of us do not yet know and others have forgotten. The picture is still unclear. I believe that Chin was onto the same line of thought. He believed that more of the picture lay in a return to the crystal cave. So do I. Let us see if we can get there.>
<And if you can talk the others into it.>
Tobrush sounded very confident indeed. <Josef will go or he will no longer be Josef. If he becomes a liability I can create in him a brother. He knows this. Would that I had done it to Kalia! The others . . . they will go where we do.>
Jimmy wasn’t so sure, but it was better than staying here and waiting for Josef to move. He looked at Grysta. “Okay, your point’s accepted. We’re pulling out,” he told her.
The others were not nearly as enthusiastic about the idea, he found, somewhat to his consternation. Josef, of course, had his own agenda, at least in his mind, and he expected Krisha to be less than thrilled at the idea of possibly facing the Quintara again, this time defenseless—for all the good her talents had done before—but Modra he expected to be anxious to get on with this. She felt his puzzlement and said, softly, “It’s not fear, Jimmy. I think you know that. I’m just so tired. It’s as if I’ve been going round and round on this high-speed thrill ride. I got off, and it’s so damned peaceful I don’t want to buy another ticket.” Still, she knew she would, and he understood that.
“I’ve been feeling a bit tired myself,” he responded softly. “But this isn’t off the ride—it’s merely pausing for suspense before dropping us into a dark pit. Just over the hill and through the trees is a station, and, sooner or later, somebody we don’t wish to meet is going to pop out of it. I don’t just want the pause. I want out, and that means letting the damned ride continue.”
The next morning, they walked back to the station. The great crystal had once looked odd and bizarre to them, but now it was at one and the same time as familiar as an old shoe and more threatening than the grave.
<Take the image off my mind,> Tobrush instructed.<I believe it will work better if there is a single specificity of vision. If we emerge in the correct place, no matter what we find or do not find there, it will mark the first truly important moment in our journey, for it will mean that we have regained some measure of control.>
<What about Krisha?> Jimmy asked. <She won’t be able to link.>
<I do not believe that will be a factor,> the Mycohl master replied. <I think we all go the same place. The only important thing is that we go where we want to go.>
After the warmth and humidity of the way-stop world, the interior of the station seemed cold and sterile. Tobrush led the way but did not pause; instead, it was a deliberate pace through the thing with one destination in mind, a destination firm and clear enough that it could not be mistaken and held in its mind in such a manner as one would walk down the block expecting to exit there.
They walked out the other side into an oddly long and winding passage which led to an antechamber that seemed very familiar.
“There’s blood over there,” Modra noted. “It looks like Terran blood.”
“Jimmy,” Grysta said, uncharacteristically nervous, “I don’t like this place. It’s a death place. But, somehow, I’ve been here before. I got some weird kind of memories that give me chills. Like you, bent over, screamin’, while the captain . . . ”
“We did it,” Modra breathed. “Through there is the place where the crystals grow.”
Josef nodded. “You can feel it, a little, even out here. You remember what happened the last time we went through there, though.”
<Yes, but this time we know what to expect,> Tobrush responded. <This time, don’t go with the current. Do not go left towards the city. Go right, no matter what the effort. Go right—and stick together.>
Jimmy turned to Krisha. “I don’t know if you’ll go this time or not. If so, stick with us. If not, keep watch. Grysta, the same goes for you. You went last time, but you might not now that you’re in that syn body.”
“I won’t let you down again, Jimmy,” she promised sincerely.
Still, Modra voiced the question the others were thinking. <Tobrush—what do you expect to find here?>
<At the very least, more information. At best, sufficient amplification on all bands to find out all the answers.>
<I’d settle for the way out,> Josef grumbled, a bit nervous at another run at that strange and bizarre plane.
<I already know the way out, Josef,> Tobrush responded, startling the others as well. <Now that I know how it works, and have proven it, I believe I can use the system as well as they can, at least for destinations I know.>
<Then why don’t we just go?> the former commander asked him. <That’s the idea, isn’t it?>
<The idea, Josef, is to get out with some way to stop them. Come—we waste time, and I assume that this area will be of keen interest to the Quintara princes in not too long a time. Have care—the Quintara have far more experience on that plane than we, and I expect we will not be able to avoid running into one there.>
“Oh, that’s just what I wanted to hear,” Jimmy muttered glumly, but he followed the Mycohl into the passage and then into the crystal cavern, as did the others. No matter what their nationality or allegiance might be, it was now clearly Tobrush’s party.
They felt it immediately; tremendous vertigo and disorientation, almost as if being in several places at once.
“Pinch yourself!” Modra called out to them. “It helps keep you oriented.”
<That place over there provides good cover,> Tobrush noted. <Where the crystals create almost a natural fort.>
Modra sank down on the floor of the cave, trying to avoid the tiny spikes coming up from it, and, although she felt like she was on a bed of nails, she also felt the accumulated crystal resonances sweeping over her, overwhelming her.
At that moment she felt a horrible, sharp, agonizing pain, and, already dazed by the crystals, she lost all control.
Modra screamed. The scream reverberated around the vast chamber, setting all the crystals in agitated motion.
Green lines . . . a grid spread before them, two-dimensional, an eerie, flat sort of blackness in between the lines, and they were flying at great speed.
There was no up, no down, no sense of place at all. How could anyone go right in an environment where such concepts were meaningless?
<Hold position!> Tobrush ordered. <Feel the tug, the easy way, the way you want to fly. You can feel it, it is an effortless direction! Resist the easy direction! Wherever it wants, go the opposite way!>
<The way to evil is always easy,> Jimmy thought, not without a little humor. <The way to God is long and hard.>
<What the hell was that I felt?> Modra wanted to know. <It was horrible. The worst pain I ever knew!>
<Sorry,> Tobrush responded. <lt seemed the most efficient way to quickly get the resonance to maximum.>
<You bastard! That really hurt!>
<It is only a memory now. Concentrate on the job at hand! How many are we? Josef?>
<Here!>
<Krisha? Grysta?> Jimmy called.
<It’s just us!> Modra shouted. <Just we four!>
<It will have to do,> the Mycohl master told them. <Feel the resistance, feel the flow. Go the way it hinders you from going! Together! Now!>
Before, they had dived into the grid and sank, gone downward to a constriction of the plane toward that place where the entities of pure evil clung to the sides and hid in its nooks and crannies, beckoning, with the Quintara city at the end. Now they went up instead, through the dark above and around them . . .
<It’s so hard! Harder than getting back from that place of evil last time!> Modra complained.
<Join with me!> Tobrush called. <Give me your minds! We must punch through!>
They focused on Tobrush and tried to go with him, but all three of them felt themselves slipping, slipping backward . . .
<Concentrate!> the Mycohl master shouted at them. <Otherwise you will fall—all the way down!>
“You lack faith,” the demon had told Jimmy. “If either of you truly believed . . . ”
“Only faith can save you . . . ” Gun Roh Chin’s voice whispered.
“If demons are real, then where are the gods . . . ?”
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I command thee . . . ”
Even Peter failed three times. . . .
Something flared in the darkness; a brightness as if a star, just gone nova, reached out its waves and washed over them. The brilliance and energy surge were unexpected, engulfing them before any could react, and even Tobrush was caught off guard and puzzled, but the Mycohl was not about to question opportunity. All that was seen, heard, and felt in this place was but illusion, the three-dimensional mind making sense out of things that had no sense within its context, making shapes out of that which had no shape.
The power surge lifted them, brought them up. They burst through the flat black as if tearing a rip in fabric and burst into a universe so vast and so complex none of their minds could handle it, even as illusion.
Golds and silvers and brilliant swashes of color and all of it impossibly bright, woven in a tapestry too complex to understand, stretching out beyond infinity, to places that had no end, no edge . . .
And yet, they were there, so they had a right to be there. They had earned it.
The pull was still fantastic, and still downward, toward the black below. Burst or not, getting in was not the same as ascending or navigating within the realm.
And yet, somehow, while the shapes and patterns remained too complex, too incomprehensible for such puny minds as they possessed, it nonetheless bore upon them as concepts that they could, feebly, understand.
The Ship was wonderful!
Even as the framing concept entered their minds, there began a clarification, a simplification to a point almost of understanding.
A Ship, a craft of some sort, going from some point to another in a realm that was not their universe, nor any other like it. A ship passing through a cosmos without end, a cosmos where none of the laws and rules applied . . .
The Ship, carrying . . . universes?
No, that wasn’t right. Not universes, although they were there, an almost infinitesimal dot compared to The Ship’s vastness. Not cargo, though. Not even ballast . . .
The Captain gives the order . . . “Cast off! Ignition! Let there be light!”
And in the mighty reactions, in the great blast of power that sets such a Ship as this in motion, an explosion, a series of explosions . . .
The universes are born. Their universe is born. Energy spews, spins, swirls, some turning to mass, the byproduct of the mighty start . . .
Vastly limited universes, where only a few of the boundless, unfathomed dimensions are allowed, perceived, used. A pale echo of the infinite realm of the great, true steady-state universe . . .
Universes, propelled outward in the vast reaction chamber that powers The Ship. Byproducts, bits of debris, swirling before reaching a state of equilibrium that others would one day call physical laws. Galaxies, supergalaxies, megagalaxies—mere bits of debris within a transitory bubble so tiny, so minuscule, that to the Beings of The Ship the whole of the universes so created were as mere molecules to a giant.
Beings so beyond anything that the minds those universes would eventually produce, so alien in every sense of the word, that nothing about them could be comprehended. Beings so incredible, so impossibly beyond anything the Terran mind or even the Mycohl could grasp, that they were interpreted as mere points of light so bright that they could not be looked upon, even in this bizarre mental plane, nor mentally turned into something their minds could handle.
Beings so beyond anything the mind could accept, so powerful, so—omniscient—that they were actually aware of what was inside that byproduct of their main engine start.
To study them, probe them, do experiments, even argue over them.
To create surrogates that could walk, crawl, fly among the tiny new universes.
To debate their own responsibility, and the direction of their own actions.
And for all their powers, all their infinite intelligence and the vastness of their beings, they weren’t the greatest, weren’t even very important in their own domain.
They were simply the Crew of The Ship, doing a job.
Most felt at least a sense of responsibility, but with such vast power and being such journeymen as they were, some playing around was irresistible. Even when the Captain had commanded otherwise, some could not resist playing with their newfound toys, particularly the engine room officer and his black gang down in the bowels of The Ship.
And, when inevitably discovered, they had fled rather than face the charge of mutiny, fled into the main engine area that was their realm.
And there they had locked him in, that officer and his black gang. Locked them in and debated what to do next, with them unable to return to any part of The Ship except through the engine room hold, but still able to play a lot of games . . .
Move and counter-move. Surrogate and construct against surrogate and construct, according to the limiting rules of the physics of the engines . . .
“You cannot beat them,” something told them, not in words, or even thoughts, as they understood such things. “The best that can be done is a tie, until your universe dies or The Ship reaches port. They know what will become of them when that happens. You cannot win, but they can destroy you all . . . ”
Despair . . . emptiness. <How can we then hope to even tie them?>
“United you must face Him. United you must drive Him back into the reaction chamber and reaffix the seal to the hatch.”
<Face Him? The four of us against such as Him? How can we face Him?>
“Not you four. The outbreak is currently localized in an area where defenses exist. It must be kept there. Mobilize the defenses. You will face Him and push Him back if you deserve to do so. It has been done before, while many races now ascendant were but primitives scratching upon single balls of dust. Now it is your turn.”
<Are we—we four—capable of such a task?>
“Sixteen began the marathon, by no means chosen at random. You have won the job, whether you want it or not. That is three more than we have had to work with in the past. If you want to win, and have faith that you can, then you can.”
They were beginning to sink, to fall away from this place of wonders, unable to hold for long against the enormous pull.
<Wait!> Tobrush called. <Even if we can get Him back under lock, what about the Quintara?>
“Consider the squimish,” came the reply, growing more distant as the darkness came up at them like a wall. “Or, for the others, the common cockroach.”
<No! Wait!> Jimmy McCray called to the Being as the blackness came up like an ominous wall. <Who are you? Are you the Captain?>
“Not exactly,” came the distant, almost amused reply. “You know who I am, Jimmy. You might call me the Executive Officer. . . . ”
The blackness enveloped them, then they were through, far faster than they’d arisen.
Oddly, they did not sink further. The current, the pull, was still there, but it was manageable, nothing to fear or even particularly notice.
<What—what did he mean, we’d win if we deserved to?> Modra managed.
<There are only four of us,> Tobrush explained. <Even together we can do little. All we can do is sound the alarm, find those who know how, and, as the Being said, mobilize our defenses. If those who can do so fail to unite, fail to have the will to finish the job no matter what the cost, as we ran our marathon, as it were, then our common people will have forfeited their right to survive. They will deserve what they get.>
<Even Jesus had twelve!> Jimmy McCray exclaimed, wondering if they had even a ghost of a chance.
<There’s something coming! Something dark!> Josef warned.
They had never seen Quintara in this plane before, and they were even uglier and more frightful than in solid flesh, although on a level that could not be explained. The arrogance, the cold evil that radiated from a darkness that was beyond the common dark of the plane, a darkness that shone in some odd way and could engulf and perhaps devour, was pure and undiluted.
There were six of them, and they were moving something that appeared as a vast bulk of eternally twinkling golden lights in an amorphous bubble.
There was no question of flight. They couldn’t go back up, not now, and they couldn’t exit without going almost through the six, who were suddenly quite well aware of their presence.
<Together as one!> Tobrush snapped. <No hesitation, no doubts, no reservations! We are one!>
They opened their minds to one another and flowed together as a single force that seemed to blaze with that same energy that had gotten them through the barrier to The Ship itself.
They did not run, they did not counter the threats and insults that suddenly came their way like some dark, wet blanket from the six demonic presences.
They attacked.
Brilliant white light, the purest of energies, struck out at the nearest demon and engulfed its darkness. It screamed, it writhed, and then it fried, melted, dissolved into nothingness, consumed by the light it could not tolerate.
Three more blobs of shimmering darkness came at them in fury at what they had done to their companion, and they stood their ground and waited, letting the creatures smash right into them.
It was so—easy. Easy to enfold them, separate them, crush them in the brilliance of their radiance.
The other three, three mighty Quintara within their element, broke and fled back in the direction of their city with all the speed the gravitational current would allow them.
The demons were not pursued. There was more important business to do, and a greater foe to face, one who could not be dissolved by such a minor light as they. Still, they understood the lesson in their collective consciousness. Alone, any one of them, even, perhaps, Tobrush, would be no more than an even match and probably far less for any one of the Quintara. Together, collectively linked, the Quintara hadn’t a prayer, for it was in their very nature and their very culture that they could never unite.
It had not been six to four. It had been four to one to one to one to one to one to one.
The four moved as one toward the abandoned thing that the Quintara had been moving and probed and examined it. What it was they could not be sure, but the implication was clear. The giant crystals, before being outfitted for station use and control, had to be moved and positioned and linked somehow through this medium. Quite possibly it was just that: a crystal in transit to a new spot, one convenient to the demons’ ultimate plans. It didn’t matter; the implication was clear. Inanimate matter could be transferred to this medium and extracted from it.
Resonances. Resonances and topological patterns.
And, quite suddenly, as if in a burst of inspiration, they knew how it was done, knew all the patterns and resonances and, of course, their limitations. They didn’t understand it, not a bit, but they knew how to do it.
They had not been sent defenseless back into their universe after all.
Suddenly they were aware that something, perhaps many things, were within the shimmering mass. Living things. Disgusting, dark things.
It was already slowly drifting back under the pull of the great pool at Chaos Keep; they unhesitatingly gave it a great shove! It went back at ever increasing speed, back from whence it had come. With any luck it might crash and take some unwary Quintara with it.
The lessons were clear and learned and accepted. It was time to go back.
They separated, but the effect was not to create four individual presences, each apart and distinct, but rather a net-like effect in which each individual was connected to the other three by a thin but firm thread of energy.
He was a priest once, and a sort of priest again, but he was also a ruthless hypno of the Mycohl, and an attractive, red-headed woman, and, yes, even a Mycohl master in a great body that no longer seemed at all alien and whose capabilities he understood quite well, although his mind could not grasp the thought processes and frame of reference of the parasitic colony within; it was just too alien. Still, he had a viewpoint of things that was so bizarre and incomprehensible to him that he felt he could truly understand what the term Higher Races really meant.
And yet he was still Jimmy McCray, albeit a changed one, a McCray with purpose again, and vision, and a new certainty. The dangers of a true telepathic merger had not come to pass; the other personalities were distinct and themselves as was his. Instead, they were, somehow, inextricably linked together, all four, in a way no telepaths had ever been linked, and through a plane that did not understand distance or time as theirs did. There was nothing hidden, nothing left to understand. Each took the others for granted as if they had been inside the others since birth.
For better or for worse, only death could separate them now. They would never, any of them, be alone again.
It was, in a way, an unsettling thought, but it had compensations, too. Besides, pragmatically, what could they do about it?
Unfortunately, he discovered almost immediately that a mental expansion and even a conversation with a god didn’t mean that his body didn’t ache like hell from lying on this crap.
He groaned, got to a sitting position, stretched, and tried to work some of the kinks out. There was no telling how long they’d been in there—wherever “there” was. The others, of course, were going through the same sorts of things.
“Well?” asked a familiar-sounding male voice from nearby. “Did you find out what the devil this was all about or didn’t you?”
They all whirled, and, having just all decided that they could never be surprised again, were all four as astonished as they had ever been.
Gun Roh Chin sat perched on a stubby crystal growing from the floor, wearing, of all things, a crimson-red Mycohl environment suit, and smoking the last of a cigar.
“Where did you come from?” Jimmy asked him. “How did you get here?”
He shrugged. “I knew you’d have to come here sooner or later. At least, I hoped you would. As for the how, well, I simply walked back. I was up at the edge of the garden, and I saw all sorts of energy activity down in the city and then I spotted a couple of Quintara from my vantage point a bit down on the bridge. At least, they were large and weren’t any of us, so I knew what they had to be. I knew that nobody with any sense at all would stick around while the city was reoccupied, so I gambled that you’d find a way out, turned, and retraced our path, from the substation in the hillside beyond the forest through the long cavern to here, gambling that the presets on the destinations were still in effect. They were.”
“That was quite a gamble, though,” Jimmy noted.
The captain shrugged. “I never gave it a second thought. What, after all, were the alternatives? Since that time, I’ve been here. I had plenty of spare time to hunt up the scattered energy packs and discarded suits, and, with judicious use of power, I’ve managed to get some basic food and water from the suit synthesizers as needed, although it’s running out now. Mostly I shuttled back and forth between the forest garden region and here for provisions, although I was beginning to get very nervous that I’d somehow missed you.” He paused a moment. “Sorry. I forgot that this place disturbs you, and I don’t want to send you back off there again. Should we move out of the chamber?”
Jimmy shook his head slowly from side to side. “It’s no longer relevant.”
That surprised the captain. “Then you know what this is all about?”
“We know how little we know!” Modra put in. “My God! If the Higher Races are mere cockroaches, what does that make us?”
The captain frowned. “Cockroaches? What’s all this about cockroaches?”
Space had defeated the rat, and most other scourges of ancient Earthbound commerce, but, somehow, not the roach. Of all the creatures from the mother planet, not one, but many varieties had somehow made their way into space, and from there to most or all Terran, and many non-Terran, worlds that would support life. The captain knew the term, as did the others, and the insect itself.
As carefully as possible, Jimmy told the captain of their experience, their discoveries, even their conversation with something far beyond their true understanding. He listened patiently, asking an occasional question, then sighed.
“Normally, when one has a religious experience, an encounter with a god, one’s personality is radically transformed,” he noted. “You have changed—all of you—but not in that way.”
“He wasn’t exactly a lot of help,” Modra noted. “And we didn’t even get to talk to the Captain. It isn’t as if we had our faiths, such as they were, confirmed, or were offered an eternity in the Garden of Heavenly Delights.”
“It was damned depressing,” Josef growled. “The whole damned universe just an unintended byproduct of an engine start, a speck of polluted debris. Gods and devils both mere crewmembers on a gigantic scow, not even the rulers of the place!”
Gun Roh Chin shrugged. “What you saw and heard was for your own benefit,” he noted, “and on a level you all could understand. I find the concept of a great Ship moving through an infinite cosmos somehow reassuring. In fact, beings so powerful that they even know of our existence, let alone intervene in individual lives, are every definition of a god I ever heard. They must have been quite active, too, since just about any religion I can think of going beyond sun and nature worship incorporates some of the elements of what you interpreted. I, for one, expected far less.”
“Tobrush believes that we risk only exposure here,” Josef noted. “I think it is time we left this place.”
Gun Ron Chin sighed. “Well, this is my last battery pack and it reads essentially empty. Might as well toss it away anyway. The girls are asleep over there—a natural one, I could tell, not like yours. We’ll wake them and take our leave if you now know the way.”
“How did Krisha take seeing you?” Modra asked him. “And you her as she is now?”
He grinned. “You’ve been out quite a long time. A day or more, I’d say, by the usual reckoning, although I can’t really tell. The clock in this thing only works when you’ve got energy reserves. We spent a considerable amount of time getting reacquainted.”
Krisha in fact had been terribly disappointed not to have undergone what the others had. It was confirmation that her talents were gone, probably for good, and on one level this frightened her. Her nightmare, wandering, naked, her innermost thoughts exposed to all, was still very much there, and, at the moment, not far from the truth. Only the reappearance of Gun Roh Chin had lifted her spirits and given her some of her old confidence back.
“I want out of here,” she told them honestly, “but I can’t go back. Not to the Mizlaplan. The first one in Holy Orders who finds me will read both my memories of her and what is my mind now and I shall be sent to total indoctrination. I cannot accept that. I would rather die than accept that again.”
“You will go back,” Jimmy told her, “but that will not happen to you. You are the only access we have to the Holy Angels without a lot of problems. Don’t worry about your own mind or what they can do, though. We won’t let that happen.” I won’t let that happen, he added to himself. Not again. Not to anyone.
Grysta looked around. “Which way?” she asked them.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy told her. “That way is a more conventional station, though.”
“Hey! We can’t go out that way!” she protested. “That’s a direct line to the fire world!”
“It can be,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t have to be. Captain, remove everything you have on. As you surmised long ago, this route moves only animate matter randomly. It’s how it’s programmed. Inanimate matter must be moved . . . differently. Fortunately, the Quintara are shifting a lot of materiel that other way. I doubt if we’ll meet any through here.”
“Then the crystals are machines after all?” the captain asked.
“Not quite. They are a form of life, a silicate form, but rather primitive. Their properties are such, though, that they can perceive and thus move through far more dimensional levels than we, and a program can be imposed upon them.”
“Fascinating,” Chin responded. “How do you know that?”
The question took all four of them momentarily aback. Then Jimmy replied, “We can—read them, I guess is the best way to put it.” He frowned. “Odd. It was so simple, so obvious, that it just never occurred to any of us that we couldn’t do it before. Good Lord! Perhaps the Four Apostles got more help than we thought!”
The patterns were incredibly complex math established in a series of topological patterns, sufficiently huge and complicated to have required a very good computer to work them out in the past, were the computer able to read and understand the patterns at all. To Jimmy, who had never even managed to correctly add up the proceeds in a collection plate, it was as simple as one plus one equaled two.
“Just in case we do bump into some demons,” Josef noted, “you three get as far back and away as possible and let us handle them.”
But there were no Quintara in the station, and they walked briskly through to the other side, and out into the antechamber.
There were a number of power cables rather suddenly running along the floor, and the walkway was still there. They proceeded on and out into the sunshine and looked down upon the encampment they’d left what seemed like lifetimes ago.