IT SEEMED LIKE DAYS BUT WAS CERTAINLY HOURS later, and Gun Roh Chin had not returned, nor had they found any sign of a station, although, in this city of the damned, what would a station look like?
Krisha waited by the great, swirling pool of energy, not wanting to miss Chin if—when—he came back. At first it wasn’t so bad, but after a while the boredom and the settling began to get to her. She turned and walked over to the rail guarding the walk from the edge of the great pit and looked into it.
If this were some romantic adventure, she thought, I’d look into here and suddenly gain powers equal or superior to the demons and return with sword in hand, the Blessed Warrior, to protect my people and vanquish the evil.
But it wasn’t some wild fiction or inspirational saga; it was real, and the more she looked at that strange bowl with its energy clouds that looked almost solid, the more nervous she got that something, perhaps that ultimate master of evil, would suddenly leap from it and grab her. Almost involuntarily, she recoiled, and she couldn’t help but watch her back more than the city where the others were, and from where, she prayed, Gun Roh Chin would emerge. It seemed like every time she took her eyes off it, something seemed to move, just out of sight, in the corners of her eyes.
Nerves, she told herself. She hadn’t felt this scared, or this helpless, since the Inquisition had dragged her into the Holy One’s presence for her ordination. But even that was different. Many in history had resisted the Call to Minister, or had never desired it, but the Call had come and they had no choice but to obey the will of the gods. This—this was something else.
Even if Chin was right, and these Quintara were but an ancient race of flesh and blood, incredibly powerful but hardly godlike, it made no difference. It was that Other, their master, whom they served, that was at the heart of this horror. Even not seeing, even being blocked from seeing, she had still felt the creature and knew that it was of nothing in the universe she knew. The sheer power it radiated by its very presence in the same vast hall they were in dwarfed any such power she or any of the others had ever felt or sensed; the Holy Angels, even the demon princes, were as dust specks compared to it, and the utterly cold, totally alien intellect that resided within it was of a sort so strong, so overwhelming, that the only word she could think of for it was godlike, yet without any of the love or caring or compassion she’d always associated with that word.
Supernatural. That word had tripped off her tongue since she was very small, and she’d always believed in it in an abstract way. The supernatural was something from outside of normal laws, from outside the universe itself. Something whose power was beyond belief, spawned by no conceivable evolutionary process under the laws of physics she knew . . .
Something they had allowed back in. Something which was not evil, but rather defined evil. Something that toyed with countless races even from wherever it had been imprisoned, and something which now was imprisoned and limited no more.
But if that was the Great Evil, the Dark Source—Satan, Jimmy McCray had called it, although it probably had a million names—then that plaintive question asked within the pyramid took on new meaning. He was here; where were the gods?
The Holy Angels were a match for the demons, she was certain of that. For the demons . . . but not for that.
She started, then turned quickly, but there was nothing there. Not now.
I have to stop thinking about it, she told herself. Not only for the sake of her nerves, but—what if, by dwelling on that One, she somehow summoned it?
She felt terribly alone, and the one thing no natural telepath ever could handle was being alone. Worse, being so close to the center, the t-band was muddied, intermittent, blanking or scrambling the signals of the few others within the city. Even the newer level of powers she’d gained on the long and bloody journey were pretty well out as well. That was to be expected—it was long known that the so-called broadcast and reception talents were grouped together in a narrow band of frequencies. Interference on one would be expected to scramble them all. Still, any time in the past when she’d been either blocked out or had interference, there had been other living people, allies of her own sort, nearby.
Her depression wasn’t aided by this trial she’d undergone, either; from those first pictures of the Quintara back at the scientific base camp through the sight of the dead and rotting corpses of their initial victims, she’d known that these creatures were on a level higher than herself for all their evil. Modra had told them that the cymol recordings showed that the full blast of energy pistols hadn’t even slowed them down; that all the death and carnage had been done by two of them with nothing but their bare hands and bodies.
Now they were free, and freeing more. Millions more. Hundreds of millions, perhaps. All hungry after such a very long imprisonment . . .
She saw movement along one of the streets leading into the common and her mind jumped both ways, at once expecting to see some of the Quintara come to reclaim their city, come for her to curse her, and also hope that it might be the captain.
It was Jimmy McCray and Modra Stryke, with that odd possessed creature trailing behind.
Now both relieved and disappointed, she waited for them to get close enough to communicate.
“Well, there’s good news and bad news,” McCray told her. “First, there’s a station here, all right, and it doesn’t have any Quintara in it at the moment. It’s down in the basement, as it were—the lowest level of the city—and it’s huge. The bad news is that it’s in a state of complete activity, almost as if it were a living thing in and of itself, and it’s humming along and doing something. Possibly reestablishing contact all along the line. It’s also got more ways to go than you can count and no way to tell what goes where.”
Modra gestured with her head toward the swirling energy lake. “At least it’s a better exit than that. If, of course, we don’t run into any Quintara along the way.” She paused. “No sign of Captain Chin yet?”
“No, none. But—all this does something to you. I have no time sense any more. There are no cues, no clocks, no sun, nothing changing regularly. I don’t even know if he’s been gone minutes, or hours.”
“That’s true of all of us,” Modra agreed. “But we were poking around all over the place for a pretty long time before we found the station. It’s been a while at, least. My feet are killing me, anyway.”
“Where are the Mycohl?” Krisha asked them.
Jimmy shrugged. “Haven’t seen them. I hope they rendezvous back here with us and don’t just try for it if they find the station. For one thing, we don’t know if the Number of the Beast really works in there. If not, then we’re going to wind up either right back here or emerge in a world that will kill us or, worse even than that, in the midst of a bunch of starving devils.”
“It’s better than staying here,” Krisha responded.
Modra stiffened. “Did you both just feel something?”
The other two nodded. “Very strange,” McCray said softly. “Almost like . . . ”
“There are Quintara here again,” Krisha added, articulating their fears.
Modra looked around. “Let’s move away from here and get a little cover,” she suggested. “Not towards that damned temple, either.”
“But the captain . . . !” Krisha protested.
“He’s a smart man and a survivor,” Modra consoled her. “He doesn’t need to read minds to figure out things and maybe figure where we’re moving to. We’ll still keep in sight of here.”
The priestess was reluctant, but finally moved. The sensation of additional, powerful presences—many of them—was impossible to ignore.
They found an alleyway between two buildings on a small street that opened into the common. With a little risk of exposure they could check on the area, but they weren’t otherwise visible from anywhere unless somebody was on the correct floor in the buildings on either side.
“This is crazy,” Krisha protested. “You don’t seriously think that we could hide from them, do you?”
“Not if they wanted to find us or much cared,” Jimmy agreed. “But I would suspect that they’re no different than we are when it comes to talents. They’ll block most of their abilities until needed. Your captain was right—we even chanced upon what, from its general utilitarian appearance, just had to be a public toilet. Just as age doesn’t necessarily mean wisdom, so, too, power, even on their scale, doesn’t mean omnipotence. And, if their reputation amongst my own people is any guide, as it has been, these fellows are very jealous of their own individuality and not very good team players unless somebody stronger is over them with a whip, as it were. This’ll be a maintenance crew, to check over the city and see that everything’s operating properly and everything’s turned on and ready and waiting. It’ll be hell to pay in more ways than one of we run into one, but we’re not done yet.”
“Surely, though, they’ve been told we’re here,” Modra noted.
He nodded. “Most likely they have instructions to pen us up or something until the boss gets back, but they’re not going to be very concerned about us in our present state. They aren’t even very concerned with us if we’re wearing full environment suits with fully charged weapons. A race that can stand the heat and naturally filter the gases from that volcanic land we went through isn’t one to be bothered by the likes of us. Amused, perhaps, but we’re little more than domestic animals to them.” He paused. “Have care but check the common,” he told Krisha.
She nodded, crept to the end of the alley and looked out. For a moment she saw nothing, but then she spotted the great slug-like shape of Tobrush well across the common against the buildings on the other side.
“The Mycohlians are over there!” she hissed to them.
“Damn!” Jimmy swore. “I figured they’d be brighter than that. The power plant for all this is under that temple, as well as our food supply. The Quintara here will be there first and foremost.” He thought a moment. “Tobrush is a born telepath. Do a quick contact, burst mode. Tell them to work their way around to here and that we found the station. If they want to argue, we’ll do it their way. Short duration’s the key.”
Krisha nodded. “I wish we could do this with the captain.”
“He’s safer than any of us. They have no bloody way at all to figure out where he is, and he’s wary enough to not come straight in. Go! Do it, lass, before we miss the chance!”
Krisha went forward once more, and Modra frowned and turned, to Jimmy. “Burst mode?”
“Don’t try it. Takes a lot of practice unless you grow up telepathic. Line of sight telepathy travels at the speed of light. If you know how, you can bring up a packet of information and transmit it in one shot and receive almost as fast. Trouble is, the brain’s not fast enough, so you just get the lob and then a return.”
“But they’re blocked! Won’t the result be that the Quintara hear it but not them?”
“Oh, Josef’s not practiced enough to be totally blocked, nor are you. We’re at the common, though, which causes interference, and doing line of sight, which is highly directional. If that Julki is any good at all, it’ll sense the burst and take it.”
After a very short interval, Krisha returned to them. “No reply, but I think they’re moving this way. I didn’t sense any unusual or powerful probes after, so I don’t think it was particularly noticed.”
“Good girl!” he enthused. “We’ll wait unless this place gets hot or we get a distress message from them.”
Modra wasn’t totally happy to have the Mycohl coming their way again, and for a different reason than Krisha’s natural aversion. “Jimmy—do you think we can trust them?”
He frowned. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“Well, their culture’s more like what the Quintara would feel right at home in, right? And their trooper did do the final deed and go over. This is a truce, remember, not an alliance. I wouldn’t put it past either one of them to just figure the odds and go over and try and make a deal. That Josef—he has rape in his brain every time he’s within eyesight of me. He’s just a cold enough customer to keep it in check so long as his neck’s also in the noose.”
McCray nodded. “Yes, a violent, calculating man. The Julki, too, I suspect, although, as for rape, you’re hardly its type. That type’s probably the only sort that survives and prospers in Mycohl society. Still, they’re essential allies and we need one or both of them. He’s under no illusions that he has any special status among the Quintara, and those two are more likely to suffer than we are because they’re Mycohl—representatives of the ones who betrayed the Quintara—and, far from having an ally on the other side, that girl did what she did as much out of hatred for him as for her own ambition. If the Quintara have the usual reactions, as I think they do, the Mycohl in general will be the ultimate enemy, the ones to revenge themselves against. They know, too, that the Mycohl Empire will be the toughest to crack and the nastiest to conquer. It’ll be bloody as hell. There’s a far greater risk to the Exchange and the Mizlaplan right off.”
“The Mizlaplan will never go to them!” Krisha spat. “The society is too cohesive, the Inquisition, Holy Angels, and the gods will make us an impenetrable wall!”
“Nonsense!” Jimmy scoffed. “I’ve studied some of your religion—it’s always good to know the competition—and seen the pictures and read the speculation on your Holy Angels. They’re almost all brain—their bodies have pretty well atrophied. They can levitate to a degree but really must be carried from place to place, even fed by a monastic order of high priest devoted to nothing but their care.”
He felt her growing rage and moved to counter it, lest it bring the Quintara right to them.
“Easy, lass! I mean no blasphemy! But in my cosmology the devils are but fallen angels who rebelled against Heaven and were made ugly and tossed out. They were known to gang up on angels and beat them, too, until angelic reinforcements arrived.”
Her anger subsided, overcome in part by curiosity, but she still didn’t like the tack he was taking, as if the Holy Angels were mere other beings, like the Quintara. “What’s your point?”
“On most of your worlds, you’ve got only a single Holy Angel. None but the priesthood ever sees him or converses with him, and edicts to everyone in the hierarchy are conveyed by priests in the temples. A bevy of Quintara could neutralize a single Angel and take control of the intermediaries. Who would know? They don’t even have to fight their betters—just keep them cut off. That one act would put the Quintara in place of the Angel and nobody but nobody would know. I’m no spy or military man, but I was trained in logic, and it’s the obvious weak point in your whole society. Ours is even more vulnerable, since nobody even knows who or what a Guardian is and most folks aren’t even sure any exist. Just tap into the master computers and you’re in command. Even the cymols wouldn’t be much of a problem. If a relatively minor demon can read out a cymol’s entire memory by mere touch in a very emotional moment, how much easier would it be for a coldly calculating demon to reprogram them? The system stinks. Both systems stink, from the vantage point of anyone facing the Quintara. You watch. A quiet alliance, and both the Mizlaplanian and Exchange forces attack the Mycohl on two fronts.”
“You really think that’s possible?” Modra asked him, aghast at the picture he drew.
“Unless they’re a lot more incompetent than a single failed former parish priest. Or even trickier, which is a strong possibility.”
“What makes you believe they would not simply join with the Mycohl and take us apart one at a time?” Krisha asked him.
“Well, for one thing, the Mycohl masters are a colony of over-educated germs. Parasites. So long as one of ’em is loose with an injector you can’t wipe ’em out. Unlike the other two, they’re active. They live in their host bodies and they move about, so they won’t be so easy to pin down. Their society’s based upon dog-eat-dog, so even if the Quintara took over the Lords they’d still be targets on an individual basis, and holding the middle bosses without controlling the top isn’t practical. And, of course, if you’d once had an alliance with the little buggers and then they’d betrayed you, would you make another deal with them? Would they dare make one with you?”
“I see your point,” Modra told him. “But, surely, there must be a ton of scientists and military people crawling all over that camp and that expedition ship, and the scientists must have been sent by the Guardians and reported to them. The Guardians, at least, must know that the Quintara are loose. Surely they’ve already taken every precaution they could!”
“You’d think so,” Jimmy agreed. “If the Guardians are still around, and if they have full memories and records of the Quintara, and if they’re still able to act after all this time. I’m sure that the demons have taken that into consideration as well. We can’t know unless—until—we can get there and report. And neither the Mizlaplan nor the Mycohl are going to really know anything for sure unless some of their own come back and confirm their intelligence.” He looked at Krisha. “That’s why you are going to have to come with us and get out of here. Getting you back is among our most vital tasks, since you’re the only hope of warning your Holy Angels.”
“Me and the captain, you mean.”
He shook his head. “In this case, the captain’s irrelevant. They won’t be able to confirm and fully read out his memories of all this as they can with you. He can back you up, but you are the only one who can even get an audience with one of your Holy Ones, and the only one whose credibility is beyond suspicion. I understood this, and so did Chin. That’s why we’ve been filling you with everything we know and suspect and guess. You’re our messenger, too.”
She seemed startled by that. “I see.”
Modra understood. “You don’t want to leave without him,” she said as gently as possible. “We’ll give him all the time we can, but if the Quintara are here, now, it’s already chancy. We can’t wait too long—and you cannot stay. You see why now, I hope.”
At that moment, Josef came around the corner and flattened against the wall as if something was chasing him. They tensed, suddenly aware of the narrowness of the alley and the single back exit it provided. About twenty seconds later, Tobrush, too, made it to the shadows. “Trouble?” Jimmy asked nervously.
“That’s hardly the word for it,” the burly man responded, still a bit out of breath. “We almost ran smack into a pair of them!”
“Did they see you?”
“I think they knew we were close by. One of them turned as if ready to come after us, but the other one said something and pulled him back. Their natural speech sounds like the growls of monsters.”
“That just means they had something more pressing right then,” Jimmy commented. “It won’t be long until enough of them are here to have checked out all the systems and have some time to kill.”
“But the demon prince said we were not to be harmed until he himself returned,” Krisha reminded him.
Jimmy McCray sighed. “First of all, they lie for the fun of it, so we can’t take that as a guarantee. Second, he could show up any time. Third, these creatures don’t have a good reputation for following orders when the boss isn’t around. And, finally, there’s lots of unpleasant stuff they can do just for amusement without really making the old boy mad. It’s going to be tough enough just getting into that station without running into them as it is.”
“You found one, then?” Josef asked, hope rising.
McCray nodded. “It’s probably sure death to use it, but it’s better than staying here and doing nothing.”
Josef looked around. “Still no sign of the old captain?”
Krisha shook her head sadly. “No. And I’ve just had a lecture on why I cannot wait for him.”
The Mycohl leader sighed. “Too bad. He’s a smart old man who’d be running things if he were in the Mycohl. All right, then, we have to go without him.” He pointed to Grysta, who’d been uncharacteristically silent through most of this, as if realizing only now some of the implications of what she’d done. “I’d prefer we didn’t have that baggage along, though. I don’t know who or what she is, but she belongs with them, not us, just like Kalia.”
“She comes,” Jimmy responded sharply. “If she’s with them, we want her where we can keep an eye on her. If not, I don’t want to give them any presents, including knowledge of everything we’ve talked about and done.”
“I wasn’t thinking of letting her loose,” Josef said menacingly.
“Maybe we could kill her—I’m not sure about what it takes to do in a syn—but the empathic waves would draw them irresistibly to us, particularly a death,” Jimmy noted. “No, she’s my responsibility, and my burden.”
“Gee, thanks a lot, Jimmy,” Grysta said sourly.
Now Tobrush, who had to use telepathy to speak with the others, chose its words carefully and allowed the near-absolute telepathic shield to drop for only a moment.
<You all must let me touch you,> the Julki told them. <I can make the marks.> To demonstrate, a trio of incredibly thin, wiry tentacles extended from its back, curved around, and, guided by the stalked eyes looking back at itself, they oozed some thick, black substance and drew three perfect vertical lines there.
“Is that stuff safe?” Modra asked worriedly.
Jimmy shrugged. “There’s not much else around here to do it with. I just hope it comes off.”
The tendrils felt like wet twine, and Tobrush had drawn the theoretical safety marks on Josef, Jimmy, Modra, and even Grysta. Only Krisha shied away from the tendrils at first, almost causing a real mess on her forehead, but she finally relaxed enough to get it done.
Jimmy was as satisfied as he could be that they were ready, and looked at Krisha. “Take one more look for the captain. A good look. Then we have to go. There’s no way around it.”
She nodded, went to the end of the alley, and, after her normal and paranormal senses told her that nothing was in the immediate area of the common, she stepped out, deliberately exposing herself for close to thirty seconds. Finally Josef ran up to her and, seizing an arm, pulled her back with a violent jerk.
“That’s enough!” he growled. “More than enough. Betray yourself if you want but leave the rest of us out of it!”
She was furious at him and tempted to take him on, although his size and violent nature showed he’d be no easy match, but Modra got to them before either could do much more than glare at one another.
“Enough of this!” Jimmy McCray snapped. “We’re as good as dead anyway without a miracle! If we start that up again even miracles will be impossible! The greatest weapon these creatures have, far more than even their powers, is our own disunity!”
They both relaxed a bit, the crisis past for the moment, but nobody had to be an empath to realize that the resentment between the pair still smoldered. Still, Jimmy’s point was well taken and they knew it.
The route down to the station level was convoluted, and several times they had to either stop or veer away as they felt or saw Quintara in the area. The sights and sounds of creatures working hard were all around them; unsuspected panels in some streets were now off, and large machines of various shapes and sizes and unknown purposes littered some of the other walkways and side streets. In a way, it was reassuring to see such things; they reinforced Gun Roh Chin’s admonition that the Quintara were, after all, flesh and blood creatures like themselves, and that their true power came from evolution and superior technology, not some vast supernatural force.
Still, it was unnerving to go down the final ramps and discover that this ancient capital of some past demon empire appeared floating on nothing at all; the station suspended seemingly from the underside of the entire vast plate that supported the city.
Although clearly not designed for any sort of commuting traffic, the station was nonetheless vast in size; a great oval-shaped common flanked on both sides by seemingly endless numbers of giant crystal openings. While no living creatures were in sight, it was clear from more dislodged floor panels and various equipment scattered about that a technical team was either working here or expected to shortly, increasing their sense of urgency.
“But which one, if any, is the way out of here?” Modra asked, open-minded at the choices. “They could lead anywhere!”
“There don’t seem to be any signs,” Jimmy agreed. “Still, I think we pick one and see what happens. Either that, or each of us takes a different one in hopes at least one of us gets back.”
“If only we knew how the system operated,” Josef sighed, looking at the various entrances.
“The captain might have figured it out, but he’s not here,” Krisha put in. “He had a gift for it, even if it was all just logical deduction.”
Jimmy thought a moment, feeling that Quintara were breathing down their necks and knowing as well that the enemy could pop out at any moment from any of the crystals. “They look identical to me,” he said at last. “I say we just pick one and go from there.”
“The captain felt that we were steered down, partly because of our clothing and perhaps lack of the Mark,” Krisha reminded them. “I think he suspected that they were all the same. That the crystals were some kind of dimensional switch box. Tesseracts, Manya called them.”
Tobrush risked a broadcast of its thoughts. <If they are true tesseracts, they might well touch on many, perhaps any, points without going through intervening space. In this case, each crystal is simultaneously touching every other crystal in the network. In that arcane branch of mathematics it just could be.>
Jimmy frowned. “I wonder . . . It’s as good an idea as any. I say we pick one and have a destination, a common destination, in mind.”
“You mean we just wish ourselves home?” Modra asked skeptically.
“Uh-uh. It’ll have to be a station and we only know the whereabouts of a couple of them. The crystal cave, water world, and fire world are out. The plain, flat world is a good one, but they might not have freed those two demons yet. That leaves the station we came in at. At least we can be pretty sure there are no demons there.”
“I wonder if we can be sure there are no demons anywhere we go,” Modra muttered.
Jimmy shrugged. “What the hell? We’ll probably be killed on the other side if we’re wrong anyway. I—”
At that moment, from a crystal gate not five meters away, a demon emerged. They froze, far too exposed to hope they could make a successful run for cover and the demon, too, froze, looking slightly puzzled, then turned and saw them.
A demon grin was a horrible thing to behold, and this one seemed vastly amused.
<You wear the Mark, I see! How fitting that you should mark yourselves the way you mark your cattle!>
There wasn’t any use bluffing it through; this one, like all demons, had the full range of talents in a strength far beyond any known to normal races.
Josef still tried to play a card if he could. <We are under the protection of your princes,> he told the demon.
<In a manner of speaking, I suppose,> the creature granted. <But it is I who am answerable to them, not you, and I am your master now. Give yourselves to me now, freely and of your own will, and I shall use the portal to send you far from here, and you shall live as my slaves in my service forever.>
“Never!” Krisha shouted back at him.
<Otherwise I shall send you elsewhere, where pain such as you have never known is eternal, yet death never comes.> He raised his left hand and slowly brought it down again. As he did, each of the Terrans felt as if some great invisible giant were pressing on them, and they dropped to their knees. The same happened to Tobrush’s head, its long neck being forced to the floor.
Jimmy McCray struggled against it. <By the power of my Lord Jesus Christ I reject thy power! The power of Christ commands thee! The power of Christ . . . >
Krisha, realizing what McCray was doing, joined in with her own.
<May the power of Lord Jasura whose dominion over evil is greatest of the gods command thy power! Away in the name of Jasura, and of Madigh His Holy Handmaiden, protector of the Holy . . . !>
For a moment, the demon was taken unawares. They felt his grip on them loosen for a moment, and he shook his head, as if trying to clear it. The victory, however, did not last long. Both of the chanters suddenly felt enormous pressure being applied against their own minds. It was almost a physical thing, black, impenetrable, and overwhelming, darkness overcoming the brightness of faith.
<Enough!> cried the demon. <If either of you were less worldly, or at the core had the simplistic total faith in your petty parochial deities, you might have been able to focus enough power to truly discomfort me, but at both your own cores there is doubt, and that doubt is enough. You pray to gods you doubt exist, and, as such, you pray to nothing!>
The blackness entered their minds, at once chilling them with its cold evil and at the same time seeking out, finding, and magnifying that doubt into a spiritual well that seemed empty, empty, empty . . .
The station, the others, ceased to exist. They each found themselves swirling around in a sea of darkness, evil, corruption, the darkest parts of their own psyches, with flashes, now and again, like lightning against a dark window, of everything and anything that, deep down, terrified them the most.
They were drowning, drowning in a sea of their own terrors, and, like sailors overboard in a storm, each saw a single line, a lifeline, the only way out of sinking further and further into the horrors their own minds kept hidden from them, kept locked out of sight . . .
<Grab on to the line,> the demon called to them. <Come to me, become mine; give your bodies, minds, and souls to me and call me Master, and I shall rescue you. Your gods cannot rescue you. Your friends cannot rescue you. Your minds cannot rescue you. Only I can save you now!>
The terrors increased, became more tangible, reached out, engulfed them, leaving only the tiny tendril of a lifeline. It became impossible to think, impossible to react to the terror in any way other than to reach for that blazing lifeline . . .
Suddenly it stopped, utterly, as if a wall had materialized between the demon’s mind and theirs. Both Jimmy and Krisha were wide-eyed, wild-looking, not quite sane in appearance, but they were back, and not because of that lifeline . . .
<What the . . . ?> they heard the demon say to himself in shocked disbelief, but at a power level far below what he’d been capable of only moments before.
<Quickly!> Tobrush called to the others. <I don’t know how long that’ll hold him and it will surely bring others! Josef! Stryke! Bring those two with you until they get their wits about them! Into that entrance, there! It’s as good as any!>
For a moment, the others were as confused as the demon. They’d been cut off, almost ignored, when the demon launched his mental assault on the pair, but the demon had enough spare power to have kept them from running as he’d worked his misery on the chanters. Now, suddenly, both saw that Tobrush, rather than run away from the demon, had crept toward him, until, within range of the Julki tendrils, the demon, intent on the pair under attack, had allowed himself to be encircled by a neatly drawn black pentagram.
The demon himself now realized what had happened, and tried to calm himself. <Do you think this petty little thing will hold me for long? It is a scratch, an irritant! You’ll need more than this to bind the likes of me for long! And you, Julki, will suffer first!>
The demon turned and stared intently at Tobrush, and, even weakened by the pentagram, it was still terribly strong, its power rolling, concentrated, at the creature who had done this.
Tobrush, who not long before had seemed as in thrall to the power as the others, now seemed to hardly notice the mental assault upon its mind.
<I believe you are correct,> the Julki shot back at the demon. <I suppose there isn’t a better time than now to test a theory.>
A group of tendrils shot with lightning speed from the Julki’s back, breaking the pentagram as the demon roared in anger, and went straight into the demon’s mouth.
The demon bit them off, and swallowed. Roaring in terrible satisfaction and then laughing at Tobrush’s lapse, the demon took a step, crossing the pentagram boundary, then another, and another.
<Your torments will be legend for ten thousand years!> he told them, and then, abruptly, he stopped, stiffened, and started jerking about, as if having spasms in every major muscle of his body.
They watched, thunderstruck, as the creature began to tremble horribly, then to actually claw at his own body, creating huge welts wherever those talons touched.
Then his skin, so tough that it absorbed almost anything, began almost to come alive, as if tremendous undulating masses of living tissue beneath fought to break out of it, while the face contorted in sheer agony, all traces of the arrogance and self-control gone.
<Get in there! NOW!> Tobrush ordered them with a strength of command that seemed more the equal of the Quintara than its usual self. <I believe the creature is going to explode and you do not want any of it touching you! MOVE!>
They moved into the nearest crystal opening, and Tobrush followed with all speed.
Jimmy McCray was starting to come around but he wasn’t sure that anything his mind told him had just happened wasn’t still part of the delusions. It was Josef, however, who was most confused, and amazed.
“You just killed a demon!” the big man exclaimed. “You actually killed one of them!”
<Alas, I think not, although I destroyed its material part,> the Julki explained. <Just as I entered, I saw—no, sensed—that there was something more, at its center and core, something not of life as we know or understand it, more kin to those beings of that other plane than of here. Fortunately, without the body they cannot remain here without geometric protections, and our friend back there was sucked back into that filth from which it sprang.>
“All right, all right, be mystical all of a sudden if you want, but you killed it for all intents and purposes,” Josef responded. “What was it? What did you synthesize and inject into his mouth?”
<I synthesized nothing.>
“Then . . . what?”
Jimmy McCray shook off Grysta’s hold and took a few deep breaths, then said, “Don’t you get it, big man? When your friend, there, needed to be as strong as the Quintara, he was. I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about your society, but I have a feeling that you needn’t bother reporting to your Mycohl masters.”
Josef was stunned. He stared at Tobrush and said, finally, “You—you are one of the Hidden Ones?”
<Yes, I am a true Mycohl,> the creature replied. <Don’t look so shocked! I am the same one whom you first met back at the Lord’s great gathering. The same who has been with you all along. We have a special fondness for the Julki form, obviously.>
And they would, too. The secret masters of Mycohl, the Highest Race and one of the three who ruled, was always said to be some sort of massive microbial parasite. To produce more of itself, or ensure its survival, the Julki, with its thousands of needle-like tendrils, would be very handy indeed.
“You—you injected some of yourself into the demon?” Josef said as much as asked.
<Yes. I had a theory that it would work, although I am not now certain that I like the implications of proving it.>
Jimmy nodded, getting to his feet. “A part of you died to kill it. I see.”
<No, you do not see. That is regrettable and painful but it was essential, and what is lost can be replaced. It is the rest of it that is disturbing. You and the Mizlaplanian priestess have had your very faith shaken to its core, and that is devastating to you both, yet it is not as bad as the implications of my success. We Mycohl—one of the three, now four, highest forms of sentient life! Masters of hundreds of worlds, feared by trillions! You cannot believe how sobering it is to discover that what you are is a disease—a way of making demons fatally ill. You cannot appreciate how shattering that knowledge is.>
“What the hell are you talking about?” Josef demanded to know.
Jimmy gestured to the Julki. “It means that the captain was right all along. It means that the Higher Races, all three of them, are put here; put here to stop the Quintara. Each of them—the Mycohl, the Guardians, the Holy Angels—has but one overriding purpose. Each has a different way to attack and destroy, or at least contain, the Quintara.”
“But—who put them here?” Modra asked.
“Unless our friend, there, knows the answer, we don’t have one yet,” McCray responded.
<I confess to little more knowledge of all this than you, I fear,> Tobrush told them. <This journey of discovery has been equally yours and mine. There are many legends, many ancestral memories, but they are too few and too fragmented, at least in my components.>
“But you’re as powerful a multiple talent as they are!” Modra pointed out. “Surely you’ve got some more information, at least now!”
<Until forced to use it, I have refrained from using any powers beyond those one would expect of Tobrush the Julki until this last encounter, except in a few minor instances to protect myself or reinforce the shielding of this group once we combined. Until I learned enough or was forced to act, any betrayal of myself would have exposed me to the greatest danger of all. Do you think for one moment that the Quintara would have allowed me to live one second had they suspected who or what I was? I can more than hold my own with any one of them, but two or more . . . >
Jimmy nodded and sighed. “Well, at least we actually got one of the bastards! You did it, of course, but, God! It feels good!”
<It is no practical solution no matter how satisfying, > Tobrush told him. <What can we do? Multiply into the hosts of the entire empire? To do so would mean the death of the empire itself, and would make us no less targets. We can nibble at them, give them fear, make them pause, but if we must take on each of them one-on-ont, the future is grotesque and by no means certain. We are only one part of the defense, inadequate by ourselves. All three of the Higher Races beat them the last time, and all three must take them on again. The implication of that dark, other-plane mass at the demon core is also unpleasant. It means that their bodies, their solid universe selves, are but mobile shells isolating the real enemy from the properties of our universe and giving it an interface, as it were, to work here, in the same way as the others Over There used the idols. It may explain why they were imprisoned in their bodies instead of destroyed before. They might not be able to be destroyed.>
“Cheery thought,” Jimmy McCray responded.
“Jimmy—better take a look at Krisha,” Modra put in. “Something’s really wrong.”
The little man went over to the Mizlaplanian woman and knelt down. Krisha was awake, but unmoving, blankly staring at a point beyond sight. He tried a telepathic probe but recoiled after a moment.
Her mind was a mess, an endless loop of paradox and despair:
<I have succumbed to the ultimate evil and must destroy myself yet if I destroy myself I betray all those living in the known universe yet I have succumbed to evil and I must . . . >
He looked over at the Julki. “Tobrush? She’s gone catatonic. Under some compulsion to commit suicide because she broke, even though anybody can be broken. The compulsion’s near absolute, but her rational self knows that, if she does it, she cuts the only one we have who can get to one of the Angels.”
“A hypno conundrum,” Josef added, nodding. “I’ve seen it before. The Mizzie Angel’s hypno is too strong for anybody to resist or clean it out. If she comes out of it, she’ll die. Since she has an equal moral obligation to stay alive, she’s staying out and looped. That’s a job for a psych, a specialist, and one with the power to unravel that compulsion.”
<We must have her,> Tobrush noted. <And we can’t stay here in this antechamber too long or someone’s bound to start searching, either when they find that mess outside or when the creature communicates through the other plane to ones still here. McCray, stand over there with Stryke and Josef and help them block as much as possible. If only one Angel did this, I may be able to match its power, but I don’t want any of what I do leaking over to you.>
Tobrush glided over to the catatonic priestess while the others, including Grysta, got as far back against the other wall as they could and braced themselves.
Even so, the blast of power from Tobrush’s mind almost knocked them cold. Just when they felt they couldn’t stand it any more, it stopped.
<Tricky. You were correct, Josef. I am no psychiatrist, and I wish I had one iota of the knowledge and wisdom you and the others believe I have. It is no trick to remove the compulsion. It is not terribly strong, just strong enough. The problem is also cultural. Merely removing the hypnotic shell would not solve the problem, since she was raised to think in these terms. In this case, it is easier to erase the failures.>
“Of course!” Josef said, snapping his fingers. “Erase the memory of her breaking!”
<It is not as easy as your parlor trick mentality believes,> Tobrush told him. <A command to just forget it wouldn’t work. Her psyche is too deeply wounded. Having her forget conscious memories would not be sufficient to save her. This is made more difficult because I do not understand the human psyche. I am going to have to guess at this. It may work, or not, and it may produce unpredictable results, either immediately or later.>
“Do your best,” Jimmy told the creature. “Do it now.”
<Indeed. Brace yourselves.>
It wasn’t as bad this time, but much of what Tobrush was doing bled out to them. At the heart of the problem was the ordination itself, the original set of hypnotic commands the Mizlaplanian Angel had given her years before. The memories of that, of her terror, at being forced into that great room, flashed before them. As the string entered her mind, at that very point when the frightened teen-age girl was made a priestess, Tobrush began to work, slowly removing the permanence and replacing it with a different image, one that was almost diabolically clever.
The ordination had worn off over time. Worn off, and, when she again was in the presence of the Holy Ones, was not replaced, could not be re-implanted. She realized that now. Realized that she’d been conditioned by her training and by her frequent inquisitorial examinations to shunt that knowledge from her conscious mind, creating a false persona, a shell, that protected her by believing her ordination was true and binding . . .
Satisfied, Tobrush moved to the immediate past, pushing back, unraveling the threads that had led to her breaking before the demonic onslaught. That pit, those terrors, they were Krisha the Priestess’s terrors, and when the priestess shell had shattered, her true self which had always been there remained. That priestess, the dominant personality, had weakened, succumbed, and been destroyed. The Holy Laws of Ordination had been obeyed. The saint had died, but her true self had not. Now it was free, free to admit that it existed, free of holy obligation . . .
They watched as animation, life, returned to her body. First her eyes fluttered, then she shook her head, and began taking a lot of deep breaths. Then her head snapped back and her mouth opened wide, as if in sudden shock, and her hands began to feel all over her body, including those parts forbidden to be touched in those ways. She had the expression of a delighted child with a wonderful new toy, and it went on for perhaps a minute or two. Suddenly she stopped, froze, and looked up at them. Her appearance, just the way she moved, seemed so different that before she spoke a word she seemed to them all to be almost possessed in the way Molly had been, a completely different person in Krisha’s body. Her shield was down, her mind as open as one without any talent at all, but it was still too groggy and disorganized to tell much.
She pointed. “You—you’re . . . Modra. Right? And you’re Jimmy, and you’re Tobrush, and you, you’re . . . Josef.”
Modra went over to her. Krisha seemed so different, so . . . childlike, almost. “That’s right,” the Exchange woman said gently. “And do you remember who you are?”
For a moment it seemed as if she didn’t understand the question. Finally she said, “I’m Krish. Krish Mendoro.” She frowned. “Aren’t I?”
“We hope so,” the other woman responded. “Uh—do you remember anything about the past, about how you got here?”
Krisha frowned even harder. “I have most of her memories. I know where I am.” She looked up at them. “The captain?”
Modra shook her head. “Still nothing. Come—we must get out of here. We still aren’t home free by any stretch of the imagination.”
Krisha allowed Modra to help her to her feet, but she was still not at all herself. She was speaking in a thick and common dialect of her native world, and thinking in that tongue, too. As an experienced telepath, Modra had been able to pick the correct words from Krisha’s mind for the reply, but clearly her pronunciation, and, perhaps, grammar, were pretty far off as well, which is why it took a little time for Krisha to figure out what Modra was saying.
<Use your talent,> Modra shot to her. <Relearn what you need.>
Krisha’s mind, however, showed that she hadn’t heard a thing.
<She’s lost her talent!> Jimmy McCray exclaimed.
<She’s lost all of them, old and new,> Modra agreed. <I thought that was impossible. A genetic trait!>
<It is possibly psychosomatic,> Tobrush suggested. <Such trauma can cause all sorts of things. I have seen people with perfectly good eyes who were nonetheless blind, for example. She has hated her talent for getting her into the bind she was in. So long as she is not telepathic, it can’t bind her again. It is the obvious answer, but I am getting literally nothing in feedback from her. I have known talents to be lost or, more frequently, become intermittent because of head injury, for example, and it is impossible to damage the area in other ways. I can but wonder if I did not burn it out when I worked on her.>
“You’re all so quiet,” Krisha noted. “You’re talking with your thoughts, aren’t you? I used to be able to do that, too. Why can’t I?”
“We don’t know,” Modra told her. “It might come back. Do you want it to come back?”
“Oh, yes! It’s so—quiet. So lonely. I don’t like it at all! Every one of you can read me, right? Deep, too! But I’m cut off!”
“We have to go,” Jimmy McCray said sympathetically. A born telepath himself, he couldn’t imagine suddenly having no thoughts but his own and no blocking abilities, either. “Just stick close to us and let’s see if we can get out of here. If we can’t, it won’t make any difference, will it?”
She stopped short. “Oh, yeah. I hadn’t thought of that.”
The station was laid out like all the rest, with an entry cavern, a narrowing, and then an opening into a central area. Clearly demons had been in suspension here, as in most of the others, but they were gone—possibly among the ones now restarting the city.
“Everyone!” Modra said aloud, for Krisha’s benefit. “We want to go back to where we first entered this horrible place! Clear your minds! Pretend that you are sending your thoughts to the crystal, maybe focus on the center, there, where the demons were. Picture the place in your mind and tell it that that place is where you want to go!” She didn’t add any cautions, for fear of putting other thoughts in their minds.
Think about the first place . . . Think about the vision of the world, of the crystal, inside and out. Think of that place. . . .
The walls began to take on a strange quality; features seemed to be revealed in the smooth-faced facets of the crystal interior, features that looked almost like . . . like a living creature, whose tissue was seen under a high-powered microscope. There seemed to be veins, arteries, fluids moving along and between them. It was a fascinating if unnerving sight.
“Walk on through!” Modra said, nervously, softly, not sure what was coming.
They walked together, crossing the great room and exiting through the far narrow corridor, then emerged into the expected antechamber.
“The walls—whatever that was, it’s gone now,” Jimmy noted.
<Fascinating,> Tobrush commented. <Could the crystal actually be a form of life? After so many, this is still most unexpected.>
“Never mind the scientific detachment,” Josef growled. “Are you all here?”
They looked around. Everyone, even Grysta, was through.
“Okay, then,” he said, satisfied. “Shall we see where we are? I halfway expect to walk back out into that damned station again!”
“There’s no cable or walkway,” Jimmy noted. “I don’t think this is where we wanted to go.” He sighed. “Well, there’s the exit. Let’s all get disappointed together.”
They walked through the energy barrier and were relieved to see a bright landscape before them, warm and green. It was almost a paradise-like environment, at least for the Terrans, but there was no sign of any structures, nor any indication that structures had ever existed here.
Jimmy McCray sighed. “As pretty as ancient Ireland was ever said to be, only warmer, thank God.”
“But it’s not where we wanted to go,” Modra noted.
Jimmy sighed. “No, it’s not. Either we didn’t tune the thing right, or know the secret passwords, or something, but clearly the old captain was wrong on this one. We’re out of Hell, all right, and that alone makes us better off, but we’re still a long, long way from home.”