The Sea is Full of Stars

South Zone

The various groups lay scattered in the vast chamber, having been unceremoniously dumped there upon materialization.

The mostly mechanized newcomers were the first to come around, with Jeremiah Kincaid getting to his feet fairly quickly. He went over and checked the two women first, saw that they were slowly coming to, then checked Martinez, and finally Wallinchky. He was revolted by what the crime lord had done to the two, both of whom he remembered fondly, and he was particularly pissed off at the near erasure of Angel Kobe.

Where was your God when you needed him? he mused as she started to come to. You should have listened to me when I told you that only Hell exists.

The matter transmission of the ancients was in top working order, and if there were any losses, he couldn’t see them in the others or himself; although given time, maybe they’d show up. That meant Wallinchky was in no better shape here than he’d been back there; in fact, if he wasn’t dead, he certainly was very close. Kincaid wouldn’t have minded if the old man croaked right here, and he thought it would probably do wonders for the others. As for the women, he wondered what they would be like now that they were cut off from the computer that had rebuilt them.

Kincaid checked the readouts from his suit, touched the power ring to manually disengage the locks, and removed the helmet. If anything, he looked more gruesome than he had in the city center, but he didn’t care. The air was pretty good, gravity—well, maybe a little low for standard, but not by much, and a bit more than back on Grabant 4.

ARI Martinez groaned and sat up, looking around, which brought instant mixed feelings. The sight of Kincaid was not pleasant, but the discovery that they were in a vast artificial structure was a relief. Just waking up at all was a relief.

The two women had already sat up, but made no move to help the others, nor do much of anything. They looked very confused.

Although Core had warned them and tried to prepare them for this, it was as if part of their brains, a huge part, had been somehow carved away. It was slower to think, and the amount of data was more than limited. Core had fed into each of them their past memories, but those memories didn’t much relate to their current circumstances. Also added, almost at the last second, had been their old personality modules, although these could not be fully implemented so long as they were attending to the Master. Even worse, they weren’t quite sure which one of them was which. Each had only one personality module, but had access to the memories and experiences of both.

Seeing Kincaid bending over Wallinchky, the two snapped out of their confusion and rushed to defend their master from the monster. Kincaid turned and, reacting as fast as they could, said, “Relax. I was trying to see if he survived the trip. I think he might have, but he’s in very bad shape.”

“Then we must get him to the medlab right away!” Alpha exclaimed.

“And where would the nearest medlab or hospital be, young lady?” Kincaid asked, sounding amused.

“It—We—I—” they both sputtered, then asked in unison, “Where are we?” They both felt cut off and incredibly alone.

“No data, as you might say,” Kincaid responded. “Somewhere else. Somewhere the Ancient Ones might have gone, and somewhere they probably built, judging from the scale of the place and its lack of anything interesting.”

Ari came over and examined the unconscious Wallinchky. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t think he is yet, but he soon will be,” Kincaid told him. “I don’t think he can be moved. How is this possible? Heart disease is so easily and completely dealt with, how could he have let this go? Didn’t he get physicals from his own medlab if not from real doctors?”

“Who knows? When you have the kind of money and power he has, who’s to remind him? He had a full rejuve a while back and they reamed him all out and gave him all new plumbing, so I guess he figured he was fine.” The younger man looked up at the ghoulish-looking Kincaid. “How did you wind up like that so soon?”

“I’ve been like this for quite some time,” Kincaid responded. “When this happened, they couldn’t do what they can do now. The best that could be managed was to apply synthetic skin over my exposed parts so I looked normal, and as long as I got an occasional tuneup, well, I continued to look the same. To steal that ship and make my getaway from Josich’s hideout, though, I had to go through a hideous external atmosphere outside the biodomes there, and it burned most of the synthetics away. Since then, we’ve been working too hard on this business for me to take the time to get it all back again.” He looked up and around with his metallic skull and eerie humanlike eyes on biomechanical stalks. “I don’t think it makes any difference here, either.”

“Well, what do we do now?”

Kincaid shrugged and got to his feet. “That looks like a walkway up there. If we can move him gently, he’ll at least be on a flat and possibly insulated surface. He’s in no shape to be moved any more than that, though.”

“Maybe we should just leave him here. It could be a million light-years to the next hospital.”

“No!” both the women said at once, looking threateningly at the other two. “We cannot abandon the Master.”

“Well, somebody’s going to have to,” Kincaid pointed out. “If he doesn’t get help, he’s going to die, and at any time. Why don’t you move him up there to where he’s comfortable, and then one of you can accompany one or both of us while we look for help. There is no logical alternative.”

They both froze for a moment, then Beta said, “Very well. We will move him.”

It was a very slow and cautious move, but it wasn’t hard, and Jules Wallinchky soon lay comatose on a soft, rubbery, but flat surface that seemed to go on and on.

Ari looked forward and back along it. “Huh! Looks almost like a stock moving walkway, doesn’t it? About, oh, twice the width of one of those doors in the city.”

“Very observant. There might be hope for you yet. Well, come, we should be off, I think.”

“But which way?” the younger man asked.

Kincaid thought about it. “If this is a moving walkway, then it’s the first real artifact of the Ancient Ones we know about that’s not a hollow structure. If everything else works, even their transport system, then maybe this does, too.” He examined the side wall carefully. “There! See? It’s kind of a panel, just beyond the break where we walked in. If we’re lucky, we might even be able to move the lump, here. Let’s see… They were bigger than us, but they had certain basics in common, like doors and roads. So, whether they had hands or tentacles or whatever, figure that would be best as a simple pressure plate.”

Alpha, listening to this, went over and pressed the area. Nothing happened.

“Any more bright ideas, Captain?” An asked him.

“Yes—you press it, son. She’s got machine hands and arms, and mine are almost as bad.”

Ari saw what he meant, stepped around the body of Jules Wallinchky and put his hand on the plate.

The walkway began moving, slowly but steadily, carrying them all along.

Ari Martinez brightened. “How about that!” He shook his head in wonder. “They could wish for anything they needed, teleport all over, and yet they needed walkways?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to get too soft,” Kincaid guessed. “Maybe we got them, or this place, wrong.”

The moving walkway slowed, and then stopped at a junction between two belts where it had to change direction. It was clear why: the next belt was running in the opposite direction, and someone or something was riding it. Something short and furry.

“That’s a Geldorian!” Kincaid exclaimed. “What the hell?”

The Geldorian, for its part, had been leaning on the rail and moving along when it spotted them, and particularly the figure of Kincaid, and stiffened. Abruptly, the belt stopped, and it was just a couple of meters from the others. It looked at them all and said, “Where the hell am I? Who or what is that?” He was referring to Kincaid. Then, regarding the unconscious Wallinchky: “And is the bastard dead or just hopefully in great eternal pain?”

“Tann Nakitt? What are you doing here?” Ari asked him.

“All I know is, I was watching your light show from inside the house, and this stream of energy came up the road and I woke up down there. When nobody sent out the welcome party, I figured this thing out and set off. I don’t suppose any of you have any food or drink, do you? And by the way, what’s wrong with him?” He gestured toward the comatose man.

“Heart attack, we think, or possibly stroke. Same difference. He’s dying,” Kincaid told him. “I’m Jeremiah Kincaid, by the way, without my usual makeup.”

“Kincaid! Good grief! It’s a City of Modar reunion! Still, I have to say that I liked you better when you were just scary looking.”

“How far have you come?” Kincaid asked him.

“Far enough. Hard to say, but it’s about three segments, a good kilometer or so. From the smell and look, it seemed like the other way was going to quickly reach water, and the last thing I wanted was to ride into drowning. Gravity also gets a little heavier down there, and it’s lighter here. You notice that? Each segment’s different.”

“This is the only one we tried, but—water, you say? Not now. Not yet.” Kincaid sighed. “Then we should start off in the opposite direction, I think. I suspect it’s some vast circle, but who knows how long and how far? Come! Step onto this one and we’ll see if it goes back.”

Oddly enough, it did, which surprised them until Kincaid noted, “Well, each segment runs whichever way will take the folks on it to the other end. What happens when you get folks on the same belt at opposite ends I have no idea.”

They reached the next segment, about where they’d come in, and realized that Wallinchky would have to be moved at each junction point, even if slightly. His color was ashen and his breathing labored. It was clear that he didn’t have long.

“In any part of the Realm, he’d have instant and total help and be up and around in a short period of time,” Kincaid mused, looking at him. “In older times, before that kind of response, they used to teach people what to do in emergencies like this. Isn’t it odd that the more advanced we’ve become, the more ignorant we’ve become? Could any of us plow a field, live off the land, even know how to safely build a fire or hunt game? Without our machines and data banks, we’re pretty damned helpless. Masters of the universe! We who don’t know how to piss outdoors!”

Tann Nakitt looked around at the vast chamber around them. “Maybe that happened to them, huh? Maybe they had a problem. Solar storm or something, disrupted their mental links to their magical computers and all that power. Ever think that maybe they were so advanced that when they were cut off they died? That they’d become one with their machines? Neat thought, isn’t it? And, by the way, I have both hunted and fished and I can make a fire by rubbing two androids together. Still, I wish I had a drink.”

“We’ve got the stuff in our suits, but that’s not easy to transfer,” Kincaid responded. “It’s best we find the exit.”

“I’ll go,” Ari volunteered. “Better than sitting here on deathwatch.”

“No!” Alpha said sharply. “You will remain here with Beta and the Master. You are wholly organic and therefore have the potential to do things Beta herself cannot if need be.”

“You can’t stop me,” Kincaid told her, not threateningly, but as a statement of fact. “And Tann Nakitt is not a party to this. I say the three of us go, and Beta and Martinez remain.”

“Very well. Time is of the essence, then. Let us go.”

Ari started to follow them, but Beta moved and blocked him. Although she was much smaller, the reinforced limbs the two women had been given after they were properly programmed were more than his match, and he couldn’t easily reason with or argue with them. He sighed, watching the figures vanish from sight. It didn’t take long before he decided that even talking to a slave was better than nothing.

“Beta, do you remember who and what you used to be?”

“The question is meaningless,” she responded. “Beta has never been anything but Beta. I have the memories of the one who was and is no more except as data, but I am not her.”

“So you have all of Ming’s memories, but you don’t see any connection between her and yourself?”

“The name you speak is not in my data field. I have no name for the other.”

“Well, it was probably erased, but it was Ming Dawn Palavri. Alpha was Angel Kobe.”

“No, Alpha is Alpha. She simply has the data of another, as I do.”

This was tough. “So it’s just data? But what good is that data if you cannot assume the identity of the one who lived those memories? Every memory in the brain is subjective. How can you interpret it if you weren’t ever her?”

“I have the module to do this, but I can integrate it only on command of the Master.”

“And what if he dies? If your sole purpose is to serve him, and he dies, then you have no purpose? No Master? Do you die or what?”

“In the absence of the Master, and death is an absence condition, then we would both serve the Oneness.”

“The Oneness? Who or what is that?” He was sure his uncle hadn’t come up with anything like a Oneness.

“We are both part of the One. We are detached from it, but still part of it. We would then become self-programming autonomous units but in its service.”

He finally got it. “The One—you mean the house computer? The server core?”

“Yes.”

He sighed and leaned back against the wall. All his life he’d thought of himself as basically a moral guy, that what he did was basically honest work, and that what his uncle did was between his uncle and the cops. Now he’d been dragged into it, not just a little larceny but big-time, with deaths and worse, and he’d managed to some degree to rationalize even that. But what his uncle had done to Ming, particularly Ming, hit home with him. It made him feel… well, dirty. In an age when machines could do anything and if you had the money, you were at least a minor version of what they thought these Ancient Ones were, only somebody who could have everything would decide he wanted human slaves. Even an honest death would be preferable. Hell, he’d known this woman. Jeez! He’d even had a good time in bed with her on a couple of occasions, the last time on the City of Modar itself. To see her reduced to this just to feed a rich old man’s fantasies and ego—it was wrong.

Merely feeling this was a revelation to him. Somewhere along the line he seemed to have grown a conscience, and while it didn’t make him feel any better, it made him feel… well, superior to that old bastard down there. All his life he’d wanted to be his uncle, envied him everything. He didn’t want to be Jules Wallinchky anymore. He wanted a warm shower, a change of clothes, and a chance to walk away and see if he could do something decent with his life without being reinfected by his uncle’s cesspool.

But he was stuck here with two bodies, one dying and one quite possibly dead.

And the worst part was, he’d been the instrument of the latter. He had fired the gun that knocked Angel and Ming cold. He’d delivered them to his uncle. This was his punishment, his circle of Hell, for doing that.

Beta’s head snapped up, a happy expression on her face. “They have made contact with someone! Help is being dispatched!”

That got him out of his reverie. “Made contact? With who?”

“Someone. Someone from—here.” She stood up, walked over and faced him. It made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t sure what she was doing now. Who could figure out a creature like this, created by a man of evil?

“You must understand the Oneness,” she said. “We may need you.”

Her hands suddenly shot out and grasped both sides of his head, bringing him down. To keep his neck from being broken, he had to kneel. He tried to resist with his own hands, but the grip was absolute.

He felt helpless, and then, worse, dizzy and disoriented, almost as he had when the transport had kicked in, but different. She was looking into his mind! Not like a telepath would, but as if their two brains were a single physical unit. Information flowed back and forth, but at a speed he couldn’t follow and with a commanding force he couldn’t resist. He also felt physical sensations—cold and hot, pain and pleasure, a whole range of things sweeping over him like a beam switching on and off. He started to laugh for no apparent reason, then felt incredibly sad, tears welling up, only to have that cut off and then feel sexual desire, then none, then hunger, thirst—Our minds link one to another, so that there is only Oneness. He felt and understood the command rather than hearing it.

She let him go, and he sank down and tried to steady himself as the place seemed to fly around him. He understood now that his uncle left nothing to chance, that most likely everyone who stayed in one of his houses for more than a few days got implanted with the same neuroreceivers and transmitters as the two women had in themselves.

Unlike Ming, he still knew just who and what he was, and with the same feelings as before. But now, and possibly till death, his mind, every thought, even his innermost feelings, was an open book to her and to Alpha/Angel as well. He could feel the permanence of the connection but could not reach out to her mind in the same way she could to his.

Stand up! They come! Again his mind filed it as words, but it was on a level way beyond that. She was not speaking to him telepathically; rather, having cataloged his entire electrochemical set of stimuli and responses, she was operating him. He found himself standing up and looking in the direction where the others had disappeared, with no conscious act of will on his part.

The worst part was, when they came, he couldn’t even tell them what had happened.

Giant Emperor butterflies, two meters tall with wing spans four times that and heads that seemed like death masks, as grotesque and skull-like as Jeremiah Kincaid.

There were three of them, one on the walkway, another flying past and landing beyond them on the walkway behind, and one more hovering over the huge transport area, its wings creating a wind sufficient to whip Ari’s hair into a frenzy.

But they weren’t giant butterflies; that was obvious from the start. Butterflies didn’t wear some sort of belt around their midsection, and butterflies didn’t carry what were most definitely alien-looking but still quite identifiable heavy duty rifles. And butterflies didn’t stand on their hind legs and hold such rifles comfortably in soft but clawlike hands.

Ari felt panic; these babies looked mean. Just as suddenly, he found his panic evaporating, and a calm coolness come over him. In concert with Beta, he and she were protecting Jules Wallinchky’s body.

“You will remove your spacesuits and all mechanicals from yourselves and from the one who is dying,” an eerie, almost nasal voice said in a language they both easily understood. It had the kind of threat in its tone that would have been there even if it had simply said “Good evening.”

“We will do nothing of the sort,” Beta told them firmly. “We will die to protect the Master.”

“Then you will die,” the voice answered, unconcerned. “We do not care about you one way or the other. However, if you do exactly as we say, there may be one chance to save the dying one, but you will have to obey, and now. Time is something it does not have and it may already be too late. It is also a moot argument, since we do not care about him or you and if we have problems we will simply shoot you and be done with it. You will find that your weapons will not work here. Ours will.”

There was hesitation on her part, but there was also still a connection, albeit not as strong and direct as she would have liked, to Alpha, and Alpha basically was telling them to do it. There was also the unalterable logic of what the thing was saying. Pragmatically, there wasn’t anything else to do.

They stripped themselves down completely and threw it all over the rail, then carefully they stripped Jules Wallinchky as well. Ari didn’t lose any of his attitude and feeling for the old S.O.B. under this condition, but he tried to suppress such thoughts, knowing she might take offense and punish him. With the kind of control she had over his mind and emotions, he could become Gamma in seconds if she had a mind to do it.

The old boy was flabby, and parts of his body were almost covered with scars of one kind or another. None of those should have been there; clearly he’d been through something since the rejuve that he hadn’t talked much about, which contributed to his current situation.

What was the old adage? The wages of sin is death! When you could be the most self-indulgent person in the galaxy and lived in a time when everything you could need, even medical aid, was always there, you tended to get a bit sloppy…

“We will transport the one who is dying,” the chief butterfly told them. “You two will proceed along the walk in the direction your friends went and we shall be covering you.”

“We cannot!” Beta insisted. “Our sole purpose is to serve our Master. We cannot abandon him.”

“I weary of this,” the creature responded, sounding disgusted. “Both of you start walking now or I am going to kill you.”

“For God’s sake! Do it!” Ari screamed at her. “How can you serve him if you die for nothing?”

That logic already had occurred to the woman, who turned and stepped onto the next section, and he found himself following and slapping the control to activate the walkway. One of the creatures followed, rifle pointed at their backs. There was no question that it would use it, and no doubt that the two of them together could not move faster than it could fire.

It was decided that Ari might try and reason with it, either to gain an advantage or simply to gain information. These things looked pretty in a bizarre sort of way, but not like the kind of folks you’d sit down with in other circumstances and buy each other beers.

“What race are you?” he began, trying to get a frame of reference.

“I am of the Yaxa.”

Well, that was a start.

“Did your people come here like us?”

“We are native here. All races are native here, but I was born here.”

“I am called Ari Martinez. Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” was the cold reply.

Ooooo-kay… “You say all races are native here. What do you mean? Have you seen our sort before? I mean, native on wherever this is?”

“Your people originated here. Some are here, yes, but they are a bloodthirsty and unpleasant lot and we have little or nothing to do with them.”

“Then—why are you bothering with us now? Are we being marched to a firing squad?”

“No. This is the ambassadorial region as well as Well World ingress and egress. All civilized races take their management turns here, and we are on this watch.”

“Ambassadorial region you say. But that means even enemies talk here without shooting. So why the guns?”

“Outsiders are already causing a great deal of suffering and hardship on the world. Until that is resolved, all outsiders are suspect. You do not have an embassy here.”

There was the whoosh of great wings to their left, over the vast chamber, and they both turned and saw the other two Yaxa flying, pushing an apparently levitating but still comatose Jules Wallinchky in front of them. They were making good speed and going off at an angle, although it was clear that both he and Beta would catch up with them in a few minutes.

So outsiders were making trouble. That certainly brought up a nasty thought, considering that the only outsiders likely to have been teleported here of late were certain water-breathing monsters. “Those outsiders now causing hardship and suffering—one of them is not by any chance named Josich, is it?”

“The one of that name is involved, yes. You know that one?”

“I only know of him, but his reputation where we come from is just as ugly as he seems to have wasted no time in reestablishing here. He is no friend of ours, and the large man who seems half machine who went with the rest of our party to find help has devoted his life to finding and killing Josich. He’s on your side.”

There was a pause, and then the Yaxa asked, ominously, “Why do you assume that we are against the powers this Josich has joined?”

Uh-oh. “Because you used the words ‘suffering’ and ‘hardship.’ I would have expected a different slant if you were on his side.”

“You make assumptions that other races think like you. It is a mark of the arrogance that seems always in your race.”

“Then the Yaxa are with Josich’s forces?”

“I did not say that, either. I merely told you to refrain from assumptions. None of this will likely make any difference to any of you. Josich is a very rare exception in making any impact at all, let alone a large one. I have no doubt we are about to hear the last of your group, although if the one who lives to kill is as determined as you say, he may be the exception. Or not. You will not find your spaceships and spacesuits here.”

After a half hour, maybe longer, they reached a section where corridors branched off and away from the walkway. They were internally lit so that they essentially glowed, but were clearly hewn out of whatever this place was made of, and they had that same odd shape as the doorways of the Ancient Ones’ city. There were some symbols embedded in the floor and where each corridor started and at each intersection, but they were of a sort impossible to divine. Beta assumed them to be numbers, since that would be the most likely common element in a place with a variety of races. Numbers could be agreed upon and then used in conjunction with maps and directories in local languages.

Although basically a helpless onlooker, the link to Beta’s brain did bring with it some respect as well as discomfort to Ari. He realized she was using all of it, and at a speed faster than he could imagine. He seemed to remember from school that the human brain’s speed and capacity was established early on, and maintained by constant stimulation and the building of dense clusters of neurons. Had they somehow been able to build densities that simply wouldn’t happen in nature? And had the constant linkage to that supercomputer in the house provided constant stimulation even when they were doing nothing at all? Her own speculation and deductions concerning this place, just based on what she could see and hear and what they were being told, was filling in quickly and building a very complex picture that he would never have accomplished on his own.

If that was the case, whatever else his sadistic uncle had done to Angel and Ming, they were both among the greatest geniuses the human race had ever produced. Even more, that concept of the Oneness while keeping an identity was becoming clearer. If she needed it, and they were in this kind of proximity, she could use the unused areas of his brain to augment hers! Temporary storage. The telepathic link was probably agonizingly slow to her, but think of the possibilities…

The Yaxa stopped the belt. “Go ahead of me, single file, down this corridor,” it instructed, and they did so, Beta leading, he following.

The route was complex, the kind of back and forth and up and left and down and right that would have confused Theseus in the Maze, but Ari knew that Beta could retrace it in a moment. It had been, perhaps, another fifteen minutes and several hundred of those symbols, but she was already reading them as if they were her native system. Base six, of course. The numbers were suddenly obvious, but the symbols accompanying them were still just squiggles to him; there was nothing to match them to.

Ari felt a strange sensation that grew stronger as they walked along. He was beginning to sense Alpha as well, her thoughts and her connections. They could function as one or as three, or any combination of that, and they all had access to whatever the other knew or was thinking. They were still too damned fast for him to fully follow, but he was getting the idea.

Don’t make the turns until the Yaxa says the instruction, Ari cautioned mentally. You almost risked giving this away. We need every edge we can get here.

The contribution surprised her, but she adjusted just in time. They were geniuses and devoted slaves and half computer, but they just didn’t think sneaky.

Now they passed some very large chambers that they walked right past. These seemed to be offices, some larger than others, inhabited by the damnedest assortment of bizarre creatures he’d ever seen. He was used to alien races, of course, but some of these were more bizarre than anything he could imagine, while others were eerily familiar. Centaurs and Minotaurs, and tall creatures with great white wings, and tiny self-illuminated creations. Bipedal reptiles wearing opera capes, creatures that looked like giant bowling pins with big round eyes, giant hairy spiders writing in ledgers… It was amazing.

Each of the chambers had a number on it, no two numbers alike. So the numbers on the corridor indicated creatures; the symbols were either corridor names or referred to the type of creatures who might collectively be along it— hairy oxygen-breathing mammals, maybe. They didn’t see enough to have a definitive sample, but Beta registered every number that had a race attached and by now had enough to draw some conclusions. Okay, so type, then number-number. That was the key. The numbers ran serially but in base six.

Some chambers were deserted, and apparently had been for a very long time. They looked something like the inside of the houses of the Ancient Ones, and gave no clues other than a lonely number without anything to attach itself to.

“How many races are there?” he asked the Yaxa.

“There are 1,560 races in the world,” it told him. “As this is the South Zone, only those carbon-based life-forms who have a toleration zone compatibility are here. That is exactly half. Races one to 785 are in the south. Races 786 to 1,560 in the north. We are almost there. Soon all will be explained to you. No more talking, please.”

Fifteen hundred sixty races on one planet? How big was this place?

The mother of races. The Well World, the Yaxa had called it.

They soon walked into the Yaxan embassy, where the rest of the party, plus one surprise, were already waiting, all as stripped to nothing as they had been.

Ghengis O’Leary, at least, was as tall as the average Yaxa, and much bulkier. He also was as huge in the areas otherwise hidden.

Where is the Master? Beta queried Alpha.

They will only say that he is being treated. Impossible to verify. We need more data to act, however. I am absolutely certain that the Yaxan statement that they would kill us without a second thought is correct, so resistance is profitless at this point.

Well, that was a relief, Ari thought.

The Yaxan Marines were there, all right, and they were at the ready. They probably all looked very different to one another, but to anybody there in the chamber, they looked absolutely identical.

Ari looked around. “How did it miss grabbing the Kharkovs?”

“I think it provides an exit to those who require an exit,” Jeremiah Kincaid responded. “They didn’t need an exit.”

“I didn’t need an exit!” Tann Nakitt snapped. “I was ready to go home!”

“You weren’t going home with all that spy data locked in your head, Nakitt,” O’Leary told him. “That’s why your ship didn’t come. Somehow it knew this, even if you yourself didn’t. Maybe from my mind, or Kincaid’s. I’m surprised to be here, too, for all that. Maybe I wanted Josich, or at least closure, more than I realized.”

“You look a little odd, Martinez,” Kincaid noted. “Are you all right?”

“Um, yes, sure. I’m just cold, that’s all.”

“I can understand that. What about Wallinchky? He still alive?”

“When they took him away he was, or at least I think he was. After that, couldn’t say. We had rifles up our asses.”

“Well, you made the right decision to come here and not fight them for him,” Kincaid assured them. “The Yaxa are all females, all born warriors, and they’re quick, smart, and with something of a hive discipline. You better believe they would pull the trigger.”

Ari sighed. “Yeah.” He sat on the floor with the others, finding it no more comfortable. “So how long do we wait?”

“I suspect that’s up to our hosts,” Kincaid said. “At least we’ve been able to determine that the first batch, including Josich, came through here.”

“We were told that he’s still up to his old tricks, even here, only maybe not in charge of the mess,” Ari told him.

“He’s not one to like being the power behind the throne, but he’s had to start off new here. It’s a sad commentary that he’s already been able to cause real problems.”

“Your megalomaniac Emperor has caused some serious problems just in a month or so,” said a voice behind them. “It is not, however, war, not yet.”

They all turned and saw, standing in the entrance, a most bizarre creature. He appeared to be made out of balls; at least that was the first impression. Humanoid in shape, perhaps a meter and a half tall but fairly wide, its feet were thick rounded pads, and its legs, arms, and indeed its whole body seemed to be composed of a series of thick rings or pads that gave the impression of a mass built of bubbles or balloons. The hands were huge ovals, like mitts, but were segmented to form fingers, any of which apparently could be shifted to opposing the others. Its head was a true ball, with round eyes and pupils of deep purple. The bottom of the ball had a straight slit, and this formed the mouth, which actually was hinged only at the back of the head. It looked unreal, like some kind of puppet or robot character done for an industrial exhibition.

“I am Ambassador Doroch,” it told them, the precise and slightly amused voice not quite matching the jaw movements, nor in fact seeming the kind of voice such a creature might have. “If you will all accompany me to a briefing room, I believe I can explain the situation here, and I should like to get some information from you as well. I have some water and some fruit there that should be compatible with all of your digestive systems.” The round eyes looked at Kincaid. “Those of you who have digestive systems,” he added. “However, it is essential that we process you through as quickly as possible here. The system is designed for that. Please—come. I’ll answer what questions I can. I hope I have your word to try nothing foolish, since there is nowhere you can run anyway. I abhor having guns in here.”

He led them into a larger room, lit by some kind of built-in radiation in the very makeup of the walls and ceiling but providing full spectrum lighting. Some basic conventional chairs were set up, clearly for them, as neither the Yaxa— who, thankfully, hadn’t followed or interfered—nor this creature could use them.

On the far wall was a map unlike any they’d ever seen. It was a physical/political map showing great seas and high mountains, continents and islands, all the usual landforms. But superimposed over it was a hexagonal grid that varied only at the top and bottom, where thick, dark lines were drawn, and where the political straight lines still had six sides but were flattened into two halves rather than hexagonal. Ari and the two women examined it with more knowledge than their hosts suspected. Numbers one through 785. The reason for the different shapes north and south were obvious even to Ari; you couldn’t cover a sphere with hexagons. The difference would be the polar regions, and it was probable that they were in the south polar region now.

Ambassador Doroch took his place in front of the map. “This is the southern hemisphere of our world,” he told them. “The world itself is roughly forty thousand kilometers around at the equator or pole to pole. It is a perfect sphere, which should give you the clue that it is artificial. We believe from the evidence of those like yourselves who get here via the old gates that it may be the only remaining intact world of those you call the Ancient Ones. There are a lot of different terms for them; the term you just heard is how my own people’s name for them would be understood by you. As you might have guessed, none of us here are speaking your language. You are hearing us because we have implanted crystalline devices that serve as universal translators. They are organic, grown, and in very limited supply, so most people here do not have one and will never have one. This is important for you to know before you enter the Well World properly.”

“That is the second time I have heard that term used,” Ari commented. “Why is it called that?”

“Beneath us, perhaps a hundred kilometers or so, is a vast organic computer of a type no one has as yet duplicated. You probably have been on deserted worlds that might have similar cores, but this is the master computer, if we can still call it that, to which all others are linked. There are two levels—a very thin layer that governs this world, and the rest, which appears to govern all the remote units. The Ancient Ones built this world as a laboratory. Here they created independent ecosystems, each maintained by its own programs, and developed races that were evolutionarily consistent with the ecosystems. Or it may have been the other way around. In any event, 1,560 such little laboratories were created and populated. Where did the population come from? We don’t know. Perhaps it was created by modifying samples of real creatures from various parts of the universe. Perhaps they created them, a sobering thought. Ancient legends suggest that the people were actually Ancient Ones themselves, gods who chose to become mortal again because they felt bored, had nowhere else to go, and felt cheated that what appeared to be the end of evolution was such an empty life. One could imagine that after who knows how many thousands or millions of years of being a god, it would get pretty boring. One might find it more difficult to imagine a race of such gods committing mass suicide, as it were, starting their race over as many other races, just to find out if they had missed something and were at a dead end. Still, that is the legend.”

“With this ancient world-computer still functioning, could you not find out?” Alpha asked the ambassador.

“Well, the answer is probably there, of course, but I’m afraid that the great machine—the Well of Souls, it is called, and always has been—doesn’t talk to us or give up its secrets. It is set up for the benefit of creatures who are no longer around, for whatever the reason.”

Tann Nakitt looked over the map. “You say 1,560 races? For the whole galaxy!”

“Well, technically, for the whole universe,” Doroch noted. “From some of your sorts of people we’ve had in the past, I’m pretty certain we’re not in your galaxy, nor anywhere near it. However, we know, of course, that there are more races than that, because we’ve had some come through here that match nothing we know. Remember, I said this was a laboratory, or rather, a scientific experimental complex with 1,560 laboratories. There is no reason why the current crop is all there ever was. The ones that worked out were then created, superimposed, whatever, on a world somewhere that either was prepared to develop them naturally or that already met the criteria. Once that was done, the large transport station you arrived in was used to send the people there, and then an entirely new ecosystem and race could be created where they’d been. We know we are not unique; what is most logical is that this world represents the last ones. Either something happened to prevent our ancestors from going out, or the Ancient Ones now lacked sufficient numbers to do it, or perhaps some just didn’t want to go. Whichever, we remain here. The Well regulates the population so that it is stable for each nation, or hex, as we call them. Under-population nets a baby boom, overpopulation a drop. The numbers tend to stay the same, plus or minus ten percent. And there is another artifice as well.”

“But surely there are corruptions!” Kincaid put in. “You’d have worldwide weather patterns, air and water would have to flow, that sort of thing.”

“It is true that some things do in fact pass between, but they tend to be processed. You’ll see. The first time you see billowing industrial smoke essentially vanish as it goes across a border, or watch a rainstorm with a flat side, well, you will see. The Well does not interfere with how we live our lives, but it does maintain discipline of a sort for the ecosystems, within reason. When literally anything can be converted to anything else as needed, and you are powered most likely by a singularity deep within the core, perhaps tapped from a parallel universe so as to not suck us in, well—godlike is a more than apt description. We believe that they deliberately limited the Well so that it is not self-aware in the sense we would think of it. Otherwise it could easily become God, and not only here.”

“It is of supreme power and intelligence but programmed to serve only its master,” Alpha commented. “This is easy to comprehend.”

The ambassador didn’t seem to know how to take that. He wasn’t quite sure what these two women were, and was even less sure about Kincaid. He decided it was best to just continue the stock lecture.

“As I was saying, as part of the experiments, certain shortcuts had to be taken to create what was required in such a small space. The hexes are roughly 420 kilometers across, any point to any point. Travel between is possible, as well as trade and commerce. To reduce cross-cultural pollution, and also to simulate conditions on the true worlds they were being designed for, restrictions were placed on some of the hexes in about equal proportions. Some are very like your own homes, with a good deal of inventiveness and technological comfort. Some are limited in the level of technology available, generally to the age of the steam engine and the percussive projectile-based weapon. A third category allows no true storage of energy for use nor its transmission. Oh, you can use a waterwheel, that sort of thing, but otherwise nothing not done by muscle is allowed. These tend to be agrarian societies, with direct subsistence farming and hunting by spear and arrow.”

“Who enforces that kind of thing? Is there some sort of global police?” Genghis O’Leary asked. “Or some kind of force that ensures conformity to those rules?”

“It is not necessary,” Doroch told him. “The Well sets it. You may take a portable fusion generator into a semitech or nontech hex, but it simply will not work. It will be an inert lump. You can take a gunpowder-type rifle into a nontech hex and shoot it, and it simply will not fire. Every round will be a dud. Needless to say, the reverse is not true. If you take that rifle into a high-tech hex you can shoot it, even if everyone who lives there carries particle beam pistols. An arrow will kill anywhere. In that sense, the nontech folk have an advantage. They can hide out in their element and use it well, while even the semitech civilizations are too dependent on their engines and gunpowder to be able to come in and bully their way around in a nontech hex. My own is a semi, and while I feel quite comfortable here in South Zone with all its high-tech amenities, I daresay I could survive in a reasonable environment given good soil and seed and some hand tools. Could any of you do it? Any of you?”

“I could,” Alpha told him firmly. “I have data from the experience of living on a subsistence world.”

“Indeed? I wonder if it’s quite the equivalent you think. At any rate, you may well be put to the test soon. You see, there is no way out of here to anyplace that will not kill you. There is no way to send any of you back. That command is reserved for the Ancient Ones, and I’m afraid we haven’t seen any of them here for, oh, a few tens of millions of years or so. There are two exits, however. One simply teleports you to North Zone, but that will not help you much. Beyond the small area where you’ll arrive that is set aside for carbon-based life, virtually anything up there would kill you in moments. Even you, mechanical man.” He was looking at Kincaid.

“And the other exit?” Tann Nakitt prompted, getting nervous.

“The other is a general gate that, for me, would take me home to my hex and nowhere else. For the Yaxa, which you’ve met, it would take them to Yaxa. A corresponding gate in each capital, essentially in the center of each hex, will take you here, but that’s it. I cannot use it to go to Yaxa if I wanted; I’d have to travel in a conventional manner from my own home. It is, however, something of a convenient shortcut back.”

“And it will transport us to where our races have hexes?” O’Leary asked.

“Um, no, not exactly. Oh, you have a one in 780 chance of it, but it’s unlikely. I don’t remember it happening. When you go through the first time, you will be processed by the Well, assigned a race and hex where an added one would be of no consequence to the balance, which is almost any one, and then you will be reconstituted as one of them. The process is not quite random; the Well does do some sort of analysis of your mind, your personality, and does some rather odd things on occasion. One almost suspects sometime that it has a sense of humor. All that can be predicted is that you will come out young but generally postpubescent, although we’ve had a child or two through and they remain children and with their parents, if those parents are here; that you will emerge in absolutely perfect health, and that, while your memories and personality will be basically untouched, that autonomic part of everyone’s brain will be suited to and comfortable with the new form. You’ll know how to use the body, in other words. That’s not the same as saying you will feel like a native, but it is sufficient to get you started.”

Kincaid picked up on this right away. “Now, hold it, sir. You are saying that Josich and the other Hadun who came through before us are no longer racially Ghomas? That they are now something else?”

“They are not what they were, certainly.”

“What are they, then? Where is Josich, and what does the monster breathe?”

The ambassador’s tone grew a bit dark. “Josich is a Chalidang. That is here, in the north-central region of the Overdark, one of our great oceans. A high-tech hex that adjoins a large island. Another of that race is in Jocir, yet another high-tech hex only two away from Chalidang and adjoining the continent, and another is down here, at Imtre. That was the curse, really. Two in high-tech hexes not far from one another, and a third in what was nontech but in a formidable form. The other two of their kind arrived on land, one on the far eastern edge of the Overdark, the other on an island to the south, Cromlin and Becuhl, one high-tech, the other a semitech. They were all quickly in the hands of ambitious and ruthless rulers open to their own brand of ambition. Beyond that, you had best learn once you have been processed. Still, sir, if you wish to kill the one called Josich, many would count you a hero, but you will have to go to Chalidang.”

“Still a water breather, though,” Kincaid said wistfully. “But two out of five weren’t reconstituted as water breathers. I’ll bet that has them unbalanced. But this means that I might well be reprocessed as a water breather?”

“You might. The odds are against it, but it happens.” The ambassador turned and looked them all over. “And now, you must proceed to processing. It is a standing rule of all the races here that anyone entering Zone must be processed by the end of the day they emerge, and preferably as soon as they are briefed. We have no way to take care of you as you are, and until you are processed you are in all ways aliens.”

“Wait! Where is our master that the flying ones took with them?” Alpha demanded to know.

“Oh—him. He was taken immediately to the Well Gate because, of course, all this would be of no use to him. The Yaxa state that he had some sort of seizure and that they were not at all certain if he was alive when they put him through. If he was, he is already somewhere, and something, else. I may find out in time, but nothing would be learned as yet. If he was dead, then he is gone. They followed the only course that might have saved him. Only time will tell if it did.”

“Then we will stay here until we know!” Alpha maintained adamantly.

The Ambassador looked at her, its big eyes then moving to the others, and then he said, quietly, “No, I’m afraid you won’t.”

The Yaxa and their nasty rifles were back, standing in the back of the room and aiming at the two women.

“If those two, or any of the others, make the slightest move to do anything but go to and through processing, you have my leave to shoot them,” the Ambassador told them. “If it’s around here, kill is authorized. If near the gate, simply stun them into unconscious oblivion if you can and throw them in.”

Their briefing, and their welcome, was over.