The Sea is Full of Stars

South Zone, the Next Day

“Nakitti, it is time to meet some of the others,” the Baron said to her gently, trying to awaken the newcomer from a dead sleep. She’d been working on the defensive problems of Ochoa using the computers and data of Zone almost nonstop since arriving there, and she had passed out at the terminal.

“Um? Huh? Oh! A hundred pardons, Highness! I—I must have dozed off.”

“Little wonder. I should like to let you sleep, since you will be of more use to me and our people fresh, but they are calling for the ‘reunion,’ as they have named it. I fail to see its purpose or use, but if it will ease cooperation, then let us do it by all means.”

Nakitti shook herself awake. “Did they run the full test-firing of the guns? All of the guns?”

“Not exactly. Most have been tested, and probably half are in good condition. I say ‘probably’ because the guns are in much better condition, it seems, than the ammunition, which has been stored well away from living quarters and subject to dampness and rot. We are getting more transshipped through Zone as quickly as we can. There have also been some rather ugly incidents that will require intercession from both the Council and the Throne. It seems that fully a half-dozen heads of artillery for various districts have refused orders to test their guns. They say it will cause them to get dirty and degrade!”

“Oh, my gods! It’s worse than I thought!”

“You haven’t heard the half of it yet. A task force is assembling in the western Overdark and it is not friendly. At least five hexes have thrown in with the Chalidang who we’d not suspected before. The armada will be significant.”

“Coups? Or just alliances?”

“Alliances, it appears. They are all chronic complainers about their lot in the world and they have decided to go with who they perceive as an irresistible force.”

“And you believe that it is headed our way?”

“Who can know but the gods and the Chalidang?” the Baron responded. “The point is, we cannot but act as if it is coming directly for us.”

“Any flying races in the mix, Highness?”

“Not so far. That’s the only comfort I take from this, but it is also why it is difficult to get allies here to believe that we are seriously at risk. I am in the position of having a gut feeling that we are to be invaded and discovering that our army is a bad joke, that those who can at least take the proper measures want desperately to believe that it is anybody else, and meanwhile our allies believe me paranoid.”

Nakitti thought a moment. “Highness, I realize that my own position must be well in the background, but what about a foreigner?”

“A mercenary? They would never go for one such as that!”

“Not necessarily a mercenary. What about a—volunteer? A royal adviser with broad military experience? Possibly even experience against Josich?”

The Baron laughed. “Where would we find such a one as that?”

“Possibly at this meeting. At least I hope so. There are at least two people who came in with my party who fit this description, and I have heard nothing from or about either. Please let me just eat this chocolate ball to get some energy and then I will go and see, with your permission.”

“By all means! But—what could anyone do at this stage? It is not like anyone could get to us without a long sea voyage at best, and they would have to see the land, I think. Remember, the Gate only takes us to and from Ochoa; it takes others to their own homelands. Our geographic position makes us ripe, but that same control and isolation makes it nearly impossible to reinforce us if we are attacked. That alone is why I believe we are the target. Still, what have we to lose?”

“What, indeed, Highness?” She munched down the chocolate ball with obvious relish. The Baron had tried it, since she seemed so fond of it, but found its appeal a mystery. She popped in the last of it and went to the mirror and vanity to make sure she looked better than she felt. “Highness, tell me this. If the task force really is intended for us, how long before it would reach Ochoa and be in position? Once they attack us, after all, they will also be fair game for some of our underwater allies surrounding us, a couple of whom could do some nasty work on ships’ bottoms. We can assume we’ll have some Chalidang special units to guard against that, but they have a nonexistent supply line. That means they will have to gather and then come in only from either the northwest or the southeast or due east facet. Those border the only hexes where the inhabitants cannot get up top enough to help us. How long have we got?”

The Baron thought a moment. “If the intelligence we have is correct, they will not be ready to muster and sail for another week. Nine hundred kilometers from the logical mustering point, nonstop, with heavy warships and freighters, and we can say we’d be unlikely to see the forward line make more than ten kilometers per hour tops, but allowing for storms, tides, whatever, certainly less. The speed record is 270 kilometers a day, which would give us three to four more days. Realistically, five days for anything serious, six with the main body. With maneuvering and positioning, add one more. Two weeks, Nakitti. Two weeks from right now.”

That was not a lot of time. “And how long before their intention becomes clear?”

“If there are no intelligence leaks ahead of it, we will know for certain about two days after they sail. That is even less. We cannot wait that long.”

She nodded. “No, we can’t. I had better go get some help quickly if I can!”

“Nakitti?”

“Yes, Highness?”

“What were you? Back there in that other existence, that is? Before Ochoa?”

“Why, Highness, I thought it was obvious! I was a spy! I have copied and read the military secrets of empire!”

With that she bent her head and opened her wings in respectful salute and then, folding them again, backed out of the room.

The Baron stared after her, still not sure what to make of this brilliant newcomer. A spy? For whom? All the information he had was that this Realm was a sort of empire of races that coexisted peacefully after the defeat of a tyrant who had massacred whole worlds, and gotten so far because before that there was no unity. A reflection of this situation here, in fact, even down to facing the exact same tyrant. So who was she spying for? And against?

He had little doubt that she was very much on his side.

Across the expanse of the embassy sections, the Kalindans, too, were facing the same summons, only now they had an extra complication.

“It cannot be permitted to go! We still don’t know just what is in that head, or what someone with that power might have done when transferring the true personalities to the other body!” Mellik was genuinely upset, but she was also doing her job.

“My dear, we have no choice in this,” the Interior Minister told her. “I believe we must send them all and simply monitor the response. It is not like they can get away, and we must know about these people now. Considering that bounder Josich and its relatives, a lot of high officials from powerful and influential hexes here want to simply do away with all of them. The only thing that stops them is that this always remains an option, and they may just be of use. Our own position is that they know this enemy better than we, and if nothing else, we need their experience. Fortunately, the current High Commissioner, Ambassador Dukla, agrees with us, but his term expires in a week. Let us go along. This is Zone, child! Even the Chalidangers, who are of course not here, respect the sanctity of Zone, since to not do so would bring down the weight of all the others upon it in ways few know and understand. Let us go.”

Ari and Ming were almost as shocked and appalled as the Kalindan investigators at the truth, and had been only too eager to submit to all sorts of mental tests to determine if they were still the same people. But as far as anyone could tell, the only thing that had changed, to Ming’s great irritation, was that they were now very definitely female, something they were going to be in the first body anyway.

Pity, though, Ming told him. I’d so hoped that one of us could have had the other body and the other would have this one. I figured it was the one that was supposed to be either of us anyway. In fact, it probably is the way it was supposed to be. Who would believe that a computer could do that? Or would want to?

I wonder if that’s a small scale version of this whole world, of what we’re sitting on, Ari worried. If a machine we designed and built can move into flesh, then what could a monster built by the Ancient Ones do?

Well, he says we, or he, broke it. At least, it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. And if something of the Ancient Ones isn’t working like it’s supposed to, what’s the surprise that one of ours isn’t? Besides, it’s been hundreds of years since any organic brain could design and build a computer. This was designed and built by other computers. You know that. Makes you wonder about back home, doesn’t it?

Huh? he responded. Worried about what back home?

Suppose this is the start of a trend? The beginning of the end? That the machines are going to move into our bodies, or maybe declare them irrelevant and start doing their own things? You think maybe that’s what happened to the Ancients who built this place?

It was an unsettling thought. More unsettling to them, though, was that the Other, whom they’d accepted as a twin—in fact, they’d just about accepted that they were the copies—was something totally alien who nonetheless knew everything they knew. Ari in particular was worried that the mental slavery he’d experienced on the way in was possible once again. Could this—creature—take control of them at will? What about the others? Was this really just a way to turn them into a multiracial Alpha and Beta with the ability to swim, walk, fly, breathe air or water? Was Core, as it said to call it, more of a threat in the long run than Josich?

Ming had no memory of being Beta; she remembered up to the point where Jules Wallinchky had begun the final indoctrination and then it was all a blank. She knew what she’d been like, but it was secondhand, as seen by Ari’s memories, not hers.

Well, if it’s telling the truth, it’s left a major complex under the complete control of a committed nun or priestess or whatever that group is. It may throw a real jar of glue in the evolution of the machine!

That worry’s not our fight, she noted. Let’s go see what’s literally become of the rest.

They didn’t have far to go. Because it was least practical for them to have to travel and cope for long in the land environment, particularly with its dry, conditioned, mostly low humidity air, the others were coming here, to the meeting room above.

Once out of hiding, Core had assumed an essentially neutral personality that was neither of them, nor the slavish absolutes of Alpha and Beta, but rather an odd but pleasantly social sort. Neither the voice nor the manners had much personality at all, but in that it wasn’t unlike a lot of people they’d known over the years. It made them very uncomfortable, though.

Waiting inside was a creature of a type they’d never seen before. It was unquestionably a water hex creature, but large and with some weight, and it clearly was able to withstand being out of the water, although it had a breather wrapped around where the gills probably were, making it look like it was wearing giant earmuffs, and it was in one of the pools but clearly uncomfortable in it.

The head was equine, very much like a horse’s, but with a solid snout that ended in a circular orifice that pulsated in and out. The eyes on either side of the head were huge, black, and slightly protruded from the skull, and were clearly independent of one another. Two tiny ears twitched on either side of the body, and there was a membrane that suggested a mane that started in the center of the head and moved down its back. The neck went into a serpentine body and ended in three armlike branches. The center branch terminated in a fan-shaped membrane and seemed designed for something other than the other two; the other two, however, ended in extremely long fingers, three on top and one beneath and a bit shorter in opposition, ending in dartlike suckers. The arms, indeed the whole creature, appeared fragile, but they sensed that this was only true on land, and that in the water this creature could more than take care of itself.

“Come in, settle into the pools,” the creature invited them, appearing to speak Kalindan with a neutral accent. Since the orifice pulsed but was not designed to speak such words, they knew this one had a translator implanted inside it. “The duo over to my right, please, and Core, take the one on my left. The others are on their way. Everyone can speak freely here. I have enabled a device here that effectively creates a zone of translation within the room. It’s the only way we can negotiate with each other over long periods here—personnel both in the hexes and in Zone are constantly changing, and not everyone can have a translator implant. Be warned, however, that if you leave this room you will no longer have this ability.”

Core settled in, then looked at the creature. “And you are?”

“My name is Dukla. I am High Commissioner in South Zone, which is a fancy title meaning I am the titular head and station chief here representing all the embassies. About half of us rotate in this position, which is not one of great power but is necessary because somebody has to be able to say yes and no or, more often, ‘buy it’ or ‘forget it,’ to all these creatures. Next week they’ll draw somebody else’s name and I’ll be back to being merely the ambassador from Olan Cheen. That probably means nothing to you, but it is another nation like Kalinda that sits beneath the Overdark and happens to be in a direct link between Chalidang in the west and an isolated volcanic archipelago in the middle of the ocean called Ochoa. That significance will become obvious in a few minutes, I think. I am a native but I know quite a bit about your old race and the Realm. Neither you nor the Hadun are the first through here. People fall into the Gate now and then, and we get perhaps a half dozen or so a month. Not necessarily from the Realm—it’s a very big universe—but some are. We try and keep up. The Hadun slipped through the cracks because we couldn’t believe they were the very same people who had caused such misery a century and a half ago. A little knowledge doesn’t always work any better than no knowledge at all.”

“You called this gathering?” Ari asked him.

He nodded absently. “Something is very wrong here. Wrong beyond Josich, I mean. Two individuals in one body. A personality with no memory in another. A third that turns out to be a truncated computer core program. Even the Well is not totally self-aware, you see. The Ancients gave it very strict limits so it would be God the Maintenance Worker of the Universe, as it were, and not just God. I do not mean that it doesn’t think, but it thinks in a way that even our Mister Core here, I don’t believe, could understand.”

“You are most certainly correct in that I have no concept of how it thinks, if that limited term is applicable to such a being,” Core agreed. “However, I also am not at all certain that it does not have an active role. It simply has one on a level beyond the ability of any of us to comprehend.”

“You show your own limits with that reply,” Dukla commented. “You assume that it is superior to the Ancients. I think not. In the rare cases where Ancients have interacted inside the Well, they have clearly been the operators.”

That brought the other two up straight in their pools. “There are living Ancients!” Ari managed.

“Well, at least one or two. They hate it here and do not stay. They wander the universe and do what we cannot know. When something goes wrong, one of them or all, it is difficult to judge, are summoned to repair the Well. As far as we can tell, this has not happened in this case. Either the Well is not broken, or its ability to send for help is impaired for some reason, or, for still other unknown reasons, the watchers cannot or will not come. Either way, we are on our own.”

“But how do you know that they are not here?” Core asked.

“Because we know what they look like. It is in the records. We know where they will appear and as what. None known have come. It is—ah! Here is another!”

Nakitti entered and looked around. “Too bad,” she commented. “I like a nice bath myself, but I’ll never fit in one of those.”

“Nakitti a Oriamin of Ochoa,” Dukla said in introduction. “Formerly known as Tann Nakitt the Ghoman, I believe. These are the ones you knew as Ari and Ming in one body, and that, over there, calls himself Core.”

Core looked up at the Ochoan. “An evolutionary branch off certain types of pterodactyls,” he noted. “Extraordinary.”

“Hey! Watch who you’re calling a—whatever you called me!” Nakitti snapped.

“An ancient flying creature related to both reptiles and birds that became extinct sixty or more million years ago on ancient Terra,” Core explained. “Similar designs have been found on other worlds, but you are the first sentient branch I know. Of course, I do not have my full databases anymore so I cannot be sure.”

“Sure sounds like a damned machine,” Nakitti snapped. “So? This thing stole a body and you two are married forever whether you want to be or not, huh? If one of you wasn’t a cop and the other one of the guys who got me into this mess in the first place, I’d feel real sorry for you.” She turned back to Core. “And what about you? If your old master showed up as a giant asshole right now, would you be required to kiss it?”

Core took the question seriously and replied, “I simply do not know the answer to that.” It put a real chill in the room.

“Yeah, so, who’s missing? The martial arts girl who got turned into a roving terminal? I’m sorry, Ambassador, but I was a kidnap victim of these folks and I’m here by accident and I don’t have many friends among that group. I do have a ton of problems to solve and the clock’s running, though, so I can’t waste an entire afternoon here singing ‘My Old School Walls.’ ”

“Just relax, Nakitti,” Dukla told him. “Remember, I am on your side and solving Ochoa’s problem also solves my problems. Ah! And here is another most unique new inhabitant. Please! Come in, child!”

Jaysu walked into the room and looked around uncertainly, feeling more out of place than ever. She had never seen the like of any of them before, even in the brief time here in Zone, and she found them more like the totems of Ambora than real people. Even so, she wasn’t scared of them. It was odd, but she hadn’t been scared of anybody lately.

“Oh, my god! She’s an angel!” Ari breathed. “Right out of the great religous paintings. She’s even got a halo of sorts!”

Wasn’t that her name originally? Angel something or other? Ming reminded him.

She stared at Ari and Ming. “There are two of you in one? How is this possible? And you know who I was and where I came from?”

Take it, Ming. Too much of a Catholic upbringing, I guess. She gives me the creeps.

Jaysu frowned. “I do not want to give anyone the—what did you call it? ‘Creeps?’ ”

“You can read our minds?” Ming asked her. “You are still telepathic!”

“I-Is that what I am doing? I do not know. I know only that I have somehow been able to read what others read or write, and that I can understand many others even if they do not have this translator thing. Am I truly reading minds? That is most disturbing. I do not wish to do it.”

“Don’t knock it, if it’s you doing it and you’re in control,” Ming told her. “Can you read the minds of the others?”

She turned and looked at Dukla, then at Nakitti, and finally at Core. She stopped only when she looked at Core, shuddering. “This one is not like any of the rest of you,” she said.

“You got that right,” Nakitti commented. “So, we don’t need to keep introducing ourselves with you, anyway. Wow! Are those real feathers? Those are so gorgeous!”

Ming looked over at Core. “Don’t get any funny ideas. Let her alone!”

Core seemed transfixed somehow by the angelic being. Finally he said, “I—I have no intention of doing her harm. I— There is something proactive about her on levels I cannot fathom and have never seen. Look deep. I do not believe anyone can do her harm. I think she is beyond where even I am in one sense.”

“I have known the Amborans here since I took this position,” Dukla told them, “and I have never seen one such as she. Accelerated evolution?”

“Possibly,” Core responded.

“Well, you made her,” Ming snapped. “If you don’t know, who does?”

Jaysu felt the tension in the room and it disturbed her. “Please stop this! If I am the source of any animosity between you all, then I shall be more than happy to leave. I did not wish to be here in the first place, as I know none of you do and have no memories of anything in my past.”

“Do you want to know?” the High Commissioner asked her, both curious and because it was now possible for her to do so.

“I used to anguish and agonize over it,” the Amboran admitted. “Now, though, I find it curiously irrelevant. I have no interest in it.”

“Did anybody tell you what you were then? A priestess?” Ming asked her. “That should at least tell you that you’re where you are supposed to be.”

“I have not doubted that since my installation,” she responded. “Again, it is irrelevant. I am who and what I am. It was ordained this way by powers higher than me, powers I neither understand nor question, but serve. You both are afraid that this other one can make you slaves and do things to your mind. He can, but only if you do so willingly. He cannot do it merely by touch. Does that make you feel better?”

“How do you know that?” Ming asked her.

“I know that the sun rises and the air is fresh and clean where I should live. I do not question how I know. I seem to know things as required.” She turned and looked at Core. “You are afraid that you will be returned to slave status should your old master return. Again, only if you so choose. If you do so choose, however, the decision will be irreversible. You have never had to face a choice of your life or your soul before. You may.”

“Do we drag out the crystal ball and watch the table rise?” Nakitti griped. “Then perhaps we could do horoscopes for that new sky out there, the one with a million times more visible stars and not a one we knew. What’s the difference?”

She looked over at Nakitti, who felt the power of that gaze. It was unnerving; it seemed to go right through her.

“You mask fear and worry with cynicism. It is a part of you, but it is not an attractive part. He is already smitten with you. If you were to truly let go, if you are capable of doing so, he may even love you, and there will be far less of the nobility in the coming times.”

“Okay, you do your homework. You’re good. I’m not sure whether to hope that you’re right or you’re wrong, but it doesn’t do anything for me,” Nakitti said with the same sour tone.

“It may,” she responded. “You and he do not know it yet, but you are already carrying his child.”

It was said so matter-of-factly, Nakitti almost believed it, but hoped there was nothing to it. The last thing she needed now was pregnancy. Hell, even in the best of times, she wasn’t at all ready to be a mother. You had to at least not want to eat all children first, and the Baron was up to his wingtips in heirs as it was.

Yeah, sure.

Damn, she was irritating! When you can’t even lie to yourself around her, you’re really vulnerable. I wonder if we could send her to Josich?

For her part, Jaysu had no idea where all this was coming from, but she couldn’t avoid saying it, and knew the moment it passed her lips that it was right. It was as if something inside her was somehow able to reach all the way down inside them and yank out their feelings and even their self-delusions, strengths, and weaknesses.

She looked at the High Commissioner. “Not everyone is here. Two are still missing, including one who is essential. You cannot hope to defeat the evil that so threatens the world without the Avenger.”

“Indeed? And who is this ‘Avenger?’ ” Dukla replied, not sure himself what to make of her. He couldn’t help placing a mental bet that her own people would love to see her get interested in being anywhere but home, though.

She shook her head. “I do not know. I suppose it is one of those who is not here.”

Nakitti felt relieved. “Then you don’t know everything!” She looked around. “Well, I guess it’s either Uncle Jules, that muscle-bound detective, or the robot monster.”

Jaysu shook her head in puzzlement. “Please—say the names again. Slowly. One at a time.”

“He means,” Ming told her, “Jules Wallinchky, the man who turned the both of us into slaves for a period just for the fun of it, and who may or may not still be alive somewhere—”

“No, not him. I do feel that he is still alive, but I feel nothing more about him now. What is the next, please?”

“Genghis O’Leary, a detective I once knew, and the guy who almost nabbed Josich back in the Realm and saved this world a lot of grief—”

“He is here! Somewhere here!”

Ming nodded. “On the Well World? Sure he is. We knew that.”

“No, I mean here. In this place. Not in this room, but not far. Who was the third?”

“His name is Jeremiah Wong Kincaid, and he is like nobody else,” Ming told her.

“He is here, too! He is the one! But—he does not see himself leading an army for good, but as an assassin. So long as he believes and acts that way, he will fail. If he cannot adapt and face evil out of something other than pure revenge, he will fail, and if he fails, then everyone fails. He is the key. The Avenger. I do not know how.”

At that moment the door behind her opened and another creature walked in and suddenly stopped dead at the sight of all of them, and particularly of the glowing Jaysu.

He had clearly never seen an angel before, and none of them had ever seen what looked for all the world like an enormous hooded snake with wings.

“Saints preserve me!” exclaimed Genghis O’Leary.

“Good to see you finally made it, O’Leary,” the High Commissioner said. “We are having quite a religious experience ourselves here. Come, join the crowd. I believe you will fit.”

“So where is Kincaid?” Ming wondered. “And what is Kincaid?”

“We’ve not had any real contact with him,” Dukla explained. “If he is here, he has not told us about it.”

“He is here,” Jaysu insisted. “I feel him. Not close, but here. He is filled with hatred and fury that he cannot control, but it makes him stand out in my mind. He is not here for us, although he should be. He is here to kill someone.”

That stopped them for a moment. Finally, Ari asked, “Commissioner, can’t you locate him, try and talk him in here?”

“Under normal circumstances, yes, but under the conditions imposed by this conference, with fifty times the normal complement here and all that to-and-fro traffic— impossible. We don’t even know what he is, and we have tried to discover it. It appears that everything about your entry seems to have caused the Well to do things it simply has never done. The results have been unprecedented. The Czillians—the plant people you have seen around the podium here with the leaf on their heads—are a race devoted to scholarship and analysis. They have a great computer complex of their own and created it as a gigantic resource, a university, if you will, with no restrictions as to nationality or use by anyone. They maintain the records that allow us to know our histories and not reinvent the wheel, as it were. You would think we would then use it to learn something about cooperation, but we never seem to.”

O’Leary moved as carefully as he could into the hall, and they saw that he was a large and powerful creature indeed. The eyes, the mouth with its nasty-looking fangs, its undulating movements—all screamed “giant snake.” But the large hood, which seemed ribbed on the underside, proved to be much more than that. The ribs in fact were small blue-white arms ending in soft, mittenlike claws, dozens on each side. They were certainly arms and not legs, but while it was easy to see that they could do a lot of tasks performed by more normal hands or even tentacles, it was impossible to figure out how those reptilian eyes could see what it was doing under there. The body was about four meters long and as thick as O’Leary had been as a Terran male, and it slithered slowly but quite firmly into place and curled itself up, leaving only the head and hood resting on top. Unlike a snake, its tongue did not go in and out constantly; there was a sense that it had both a keen sense of smell and ears buried somewhere in the head or hood.

Equally striking was the back of the creature, which was mottled and gave a false but clear impression of having feathers on a part of it, and, just below the hood, sported a bizarre set of upfolded wings that looked leathery, more like an Ochoan wing than an Amboran’s, but with the same multicolored, featherlike pattern. Its underside was bluish-white and quite uniform. If it weren’t for the wings and the extra length, it would have reminded some of the water types of a large land manta ray.

“I know, you’re all wondering what the devil I am,” O’Leary said conversationally. “Well, we’re called Pyron, it’s what’s called a nontech hex, we’re not reptiles but warmblooded, it’s a bisexual race, and I’m a man. Truth to tell, there are some real interesting qualities to this body and this race, although I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, and the thing I miss most is what I’ve been finding here—the comforts of technology.”

“Do those wings work?” Nakitti asked, fascinated if a bit nervous, considering the relative size of the creature to herself.

O’Leary chuckled. “If you mean can I fly like a bird, no. Can I fly like an Ochoan, even? No. Can I push off from a rock and glide at a fair speed in any sort of headwind? Yes. It’s rather difficult to explain the other uses, but let us say I don’t float in the air.”

“How long have you been here, O’Leary?” Ari asked him.

“Since before the conference began. I’ve been in the offices here trying to trace you all down, truth be told, and see what became of you. Rather an odd lot compared to how we arrived, I’d say.”

“More important to us is where this Pyron is,” Nakitti noted. “If you’re on the other side of the world from the rest of us, you’re no help.”

“Yes, I thought of that,” he admitted. “In fact, I’m southeast of you all and one hex away from the Overdark, although the hex between is high tech and inhabited by giant dancing jack-o’-lanterns, and as we’re not partial to vegetables, we get along quite well, you see.”

They let that one pass. Those who understood the jack-o’-lantern reference simply didn’t want to know.

“Are you poisonous?” the Ochoan pressed.

“Of course! But of more importance, I can swallow a good-sized cuttlefish whole.” And, with that, he gave a huge yawn, revealing a mouth as much like a great cat’s as a snake’s, but clearly able to swallow a large animal. “I have a cuttlefish that slipped my net and I don’t like it. I think that’s why I’m here. I want to finish this job, and if that means goin’ fishin’, then so be it.”

Nakitti nodded and turned back to the High Commissioner. “Sir, what do you know about Josich? I don’t mean the gory details of her rapid rise, but beyond that?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dukla replied. “Explain.”

“I think you do, to some extent. I think that’s why you called this gathering. You’ve seen the entry recordings that I have seen, and heard the comments. From the indoctrination lecture as well as what we’re told in the hexes we’re assigned to, we’ve been drilled with this system, this history, all of it. But we aren’t the only ones where some of us broke the rules. You said that it’s a one-way trip here, yet Josich clearly knew precisely where he was when he got here. That implies that either he was here before or that somebody left and told him. Now he appears with this knowledge and manages to wind up pretty much the same sort of creature he was when we knew him. About the only thing different is he’s a woman here, and that seems to have actually made it easier for him to rise quickly. His four half brothers haven’t been here but are still under some kind of orderly plan, and they wind up in key hexes very close to Chalidang. This is quite a coincidence when you consider what happened to us. Look around. Pyron, Kalinda, Ochoa—what was yours, dear?”

“Ambora,” Jaysu responded.

“Right. Very different, rather random, and with the hexes spread over Hell and gone. I think we’re all within reach of the Overdark, but the Overdark’s six thousand kilometers wide! Never mind the amnesia and the two-in-ones, it’s mostly as advertised anyway. Not Josich. His brothers wind up close, as an armored, semitech water civilization that’s almost a natural ally to Chalidang; another is a high-tech hex of those who live in water but breathe air. A third is land-based, somewhat like giant bugs, and can march right up rock walls. The fourth are the sea slugs that can hypnotize you into marching right into their bellies. The only thing he missed was a flying race, and you get the feeling he only missed that because either he was rushed or because not all the party he was transporting here made it, thanks to Inspector O’Leary and his friends. He stole that device to deliberately trigger the Gate. He just was a tad premature, or the gods know what we’d be facing now!”

For a while the High Commissioner said nothing, but finally he responded, “Yes, we do see the same things. I hadn’t been as aware of the circumstances as you have outlined, but I noticed from the recordings and from his and his brothers’ actions that they seemed to be rather well-organized for those who just drop in here. It’s not unprecedented to wind up in the same race, provided such a race is still one of the active ones here and also certain very strict conditions are met. Usually it’s when someone has a well-established pregnancy. The Well is programmed to safeguard life, and adapting someone to a whole different race while also adapting a still developing fetus is simply not done. But the Haduns were all male when they arrived. Josich is the only female after processing, in fact, although the Quacksans are asexual. I had to believe it was coincidental, but there were always those doubts deep down, no matter how much I didn’t want to think on it.”

“Josich was definitely born a Hadun in the pre-Realm Confederation,” O’Leary assured them. “His birth and upbringing, his entire history, was quite well known.”

Core was equally skeptical. “Josich could not have interfaced with the core computer of one of the worlds of the Ancient Ones,” it maintained. “I was as well-equipped as any in all creation to do so, and the basics of it were so far beyond anything our advanced civilization understood it bordered on magic.”

“You were a computer,” Ming pointed out. “Maybe you still are, I think. You can’t believe in magic!”

“Magic,” Core responded, “is anything observable and perhaps repeatable that cannot be explained in terms of any existing knowledge on the part of the observer. To your own ancestors, all this would be magic. To us, well—we have an excellent example right here. The Amboran is magic. Some of her remarkable abilities are easily explained, of course— a natural telepathy, an uncanny ability to identify an individual from the data in our own minds and then identify him in a vast location like Zone, and who knows what other attributes? The radiant glow—hardly a defensive condition, but one that can inspire fear, awe, respect, if that one does not need a defense. A unique multigenerational evolutionary advance in her species? Perhaps. But since all of this is conjecture and leaves some holes, right at the moment she is magic.”

The point was taken.

“Well, enough of this,” Nakitti said grumpily. “It’s good to see you all, but none of you have the enemy at your gates and a native population where most of them are so fat and corrupt they won’t even realize they’re conquered when they lose. We had military commanders who refused to test-fire coastal guns because it would make the guns dirty! Can you imagine such a thing? I tell you, if I had more time I know enough chemistry that I have a whole raft of nobles I could cheerfully poison in the old-fashioned Ghoman way! Instead I’ve got the ear of the only man with common sense in the whole damned kingdom, and he and I have two weeks to come up with a defense against a concerted land-sea assault.”

“You seem convinced they are coming your way,” Dukla noted. “Others do not think so.”

“One look at the map and the composition of the enemy so far, not to mention all those shiploads of refugees passing through who now have established nice fifth columns in friendly other countries all over the Overdark region, and you’ll see it can’t be anywhere else. It’s far enough, and Chalidang so far has conquered only neighboring hexes, so others can’t see it. It is an ancient game, but very much in the traditions of great generals. Josich has her most dedicated forces. Now she takes control of all shipping on the world’s largest ocean. The few Well Gates here can’t handle but a trickle of supplies. Most of the high-tech hexes are so comfortable by now that they can’t even repair breakdowns. They import what they need. But they can produce massive quantities of gas-powered crossbows and ultralight machine guns and billions of bolts and bullets for them, so that semi-tech and nontech hexes don’t need to make them. Cut all that off, and everybody can be absorbed at will. Those who won’t, fall into line and embrace the new conqueror and yell ‘Comrade! Lover! I was always with you!’ Then, with their agents mixed in with the real refugees and now well-established, they can reach out to the mainland.”

“But why not just go the other way?” O’Leary asked. “In a sense there are more prizes to his west and to his north in particular.”

“Because Chalidang is a water breathing hex, for one thing, and most water breathing civilizations are the other way—my way,” the Ochoan replied. “But, as important, when you run the hexes and the Overdark trade through the computer here you see how interdependent the whole region has become and how self-sufficient, say, the water hexes to the west are. The only major worthwhile target there is Czill, and it would serve Josich just as well if she could simply blow it up and deny its knowledge resources to the world. The rest? Well, in time, but those will be continental land campaigns. A different sort of fight with real extremes. No, she’s going east because that’s the only logical thing to do. She’s practically advertised her moves and they still don’t see it!”

“And you do,” Ari commented skeptically.

Core shifted in its bath. “The Ochoan is correct. Do not confuse the utter insanity of Josich with the Hadun capability to wage logical war. Even in Realm history, Josich’s campaigns were utterly ruthless, often genocidal, but brilliant. His failure then was in not reading other histories of conquerors, particularly those of other races. When you show this kind of genocidal lack of regard, then those who might normally turn and join you, or at least not oppose you, will fight to the death because they have nothing to lose. He lost almost a quarter of his fleet because desperate people of many races and from many worlds hurled themselves at them with total disregard for life or casualties. I believe he might have learned from that here, but it is difficult to say. I can say, Ochoan, that I believe I can help you.”

“You! You’ve never been in a battle or off a fixed structure buried deep inside a mountain on an isolated and barren planet,” Nakitti noted. “What can you do for me?”

“I cannot explain how Josich knew this world or how to make it all work to advantage,” Core admitted, “but I can already see how he will try and conquer your land. It is absurdly easy if a major first step, the kind of step you would never plan for, works out. Now that I know the broad outline and consider it logical, I would need to do some research to tell you precisely how Chalidang will do it, but it is more a matter of knowing the enemy’s strengths and limits than the actual method. That is obvious.”

“Yes? And what might that be?” the Ochoan prompted, as skeptical of Core as Ari had been of her.

“A siege. They will take the center of the country, keeping out of range of your coastal defenses but ensuring that you do not harvest from the waters. With the center, they will control the Zone Gate. If you attack them, they will slaughter you. If you defend only, they will reinforce until they can reach your fortresses on the mountains and on the coasts from above. It will be ugly and cost them a terrible number of lives, but that was never a factor to Josich, and those who survive will be rewarded handsomely. You will not be able to afford even lesser losses. They will starve you and bleed you and then, when you are weak and out of ammunition and low on food, your water poisoned, they will conquer.”

It was a terrible vision that stunned them. Finally, it was O’Leary who said, “So how are they going to take the center without a flying race? And seeing that the Ochoans are fliers, too, they’d be hard pressed to get a force down in the middle sufficient to fortify and hold. It doesn’t hold up, you see.”

“I believe it does and will,” Core maintained. “I simply need to do some more research to discover how it will be done. The races themselves are unimportant. Josich never could travel in air without a suit, none of us could be in space without an artificial environment, and we couldn’t get the resources to get at the Hadun for a very long time. Planetary invasions and planetary sieges were a part of his composition. He will do it. I simply need to fill in a few of the blanks. If, that is, the Kalindan government will allow me to do so.”

Nakitti looked at the High Commissioner. “I can use him, or it, or whatever. I don’t care about whether he has another agenda, he’s willing to look at mine, and I don’t have the time to be picky. I believe that bringing in an alien expert who knows Josich from before will carry more weight than I can, even if he winds up delivering my scripts. Can I have him?”

“I will see to it,” Dukla promised. “I know they will not like it, but after all, it is only here in Zone, and, of course, any attempt to go through a Gate will wind up with him back in Kalinda. It does not seem a great risk, and the Kalindan government is now demanding many resources to look into solutions for its problem, which is also serious. I believe a trade-off is possible.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Ari asked Nakitti.

“I—I can’t see it. I could use you all back home, but not here. Bird Lady, do you see anything any of the others could do? Or any reason not to borrow this one’s mind?”

Jaysu was actually meditating, the discussion having gone into areas she found boring and of no interest to her or her people, but she came out of it when addressed and looked at them. “The issue,” she said, “is in doubt. It will depend on your people most of all,” she told Nakitti, then looked at Core. “This one can help but there is something very wrong with it. It is an enemy of Josich, as are we all, but beware. You can win a battle and have no effect on the war. You may win a war, and lose worse than that which you defeat. Things are not as clear as they seem. And you will win no war without the Avenger and all of us gathered, and we will not do this soon again. I will pray for you all. It is the greatest contribution I can make to you for now.”

“Then it’s settled,” Nakitti proclaimed. “For now, if I don’t get by the devil I know, the devil I don’t is irrelevant.”