It made him mindful once again of the chasm that set humans and Thuriens apart. Given enough attention to detail, bringing information to the senses was as good, as far as Thuriens were concerned, as physically transporting the senses to where the information was. If one could not tell the difference, then there was no difference. With humans that would never be so. In that light, it seemed paradoxical that the Thuriens should be practically immune to the virtual-reality fantasies that had resulted in mass addiction on Jevlen. Or was it because the hyperrationality of the Thuriens enabled them to accept without discomposure any representation of what they knew was real, while at the same time making them incapable of surrendering disbelief to anything that they knew intellectually to be a fiction? That was pretty much what Gina had said about himself and Danchekker, Hunt reflected. No wonder the psychologists were talking about having their work cut out for the next hundred years.
Hunt returned from his thoughts to the realization that one of the men up front was speaking into his headset and the flier had begun descending. It banked into a shallow turn, and the view ahead slid sideways across the windshield until a large house standing in a clearing among trees centered and stabilized. A boundary wall passed by underneath, and the clearing enlarged into a private park of lawns, gardens, orchards, and game courts, with a lake containing several islands. It was a large, rambling house, Hunt saw as the flier came down on a paved area at the rear. The main, central section was two-storied with large areas of glass, and had curved roofs with upturned eaves, vaguely reminiscent in character of the building they had just left in Shiban. An assortment of annexes and outbuildings formed jumbled extensions at both ends. It could almost have been built, Hunt thought fleetingly, from a mixture of pieces from a pagoda and a stylish hacienda.
A group of figures was waiting at the pad. In the center was a big, roundly built, moon-faced man with smooth features and a bald head, standing hands-on-hips, watching. He wore earrings and, on one wrist, a wide bracelet, and was clad in a wraparound, short-sleeved coat over light red pants. He seemed to be the principal. The half dozen or so other men with him, all of them also casually dressed, gave the impression of being aides or bodyguards; their manner was relaxed, mildly bored, as the doors of the flier opened.
Two of the Ichena got out first, followed by Scirio and Dreadnought. Some words flew back and forth outside, and then Scirio turned and said something to Nixie, motioning for her to get out. Hunt glanced at Murray questioningly. Murray shrugged.
Nixie hesitated, obviously as mystified as they were, then rose out of her seat and moved to the door. Scirio waved again, and she climbed out. Following his gestures, she moved forward between Dreadnought and the other two Ichena, and then froze into immobility when she saw Moon Face’s expression of glowering hatred. Suddenly, as if unable to hold back any longer, Moon Face began shouting angrily at Scirio and gesturing toward Nixie with wild motions of his arms. Scirio ignored him and asked her something. She shook her head, evidently bewildered, and stepped back, terrified. Moon Face snapped something at his henchmen, and two of them came toward her, apparently to seize her, but Scirio’s men blocked the way. Then Scirio and Moon Face were shouting together, at each other, then at Nixie, who ended up screaming at both of them.
“What in God’s name’s happening?” Hunt demanded, craning forward and gripping the seat arm.
Murray could only shake his head helplessly. “I can’t make it out. The fat guy knows her, but she doesn’t know him. She’s telling Scirio that the fat guy’s from outta the computer-Jesus Christ!”
A muted buzzz came from somewhere behind the bulkhead at the rear of the cabin they were sitting in, and Moon Face and the two men nearest him went up like torches. Simultaneously, the Ichena from the flier who had stopped Moon Face’s men from grabbing Nixie drew pistols from their coats and shot them. There was no pussyfooting around with stun settings; the victims were blown apart. Dreadnought gave the same treatment to one of the pair that was left, and the buzzz came again from the back of the flier, incinerating the last of them.
Hunt could only stare, paralyzed with shock and horror. Outside, all at the same time, Scirio and his men were grabbing Nixie and hustling her back to the doors of the flier, which was already lifting; the shriek of an alarm went up from somewhere in the house, where shutters were closing across windows and sections of roof were opening outward to reveal turrets; and figures had appeared, running in all directions.
The buzzing came again from behind, and the two turrets that had been uncovered exploded. There had to be some kind of a cannon firing from the rear section of the flier-it was a gunship as well as a staff car. Figures tumbled in, Scirio shouting orders and Dreadnought bundling Nixie ahead of him like a sack. Snapping out of his daze, Hunt leaned over the seats in front to grab her and pull her in, and Murray shook himself together in time to help. Hunt’s impressions of what happened after that were a confusion of disjointed scraps: Nixie petrified, but apparently unharmed and keeping grip enough on herself… The flier banking and lifting, its cannon buzzing continuously, ground streaking by outside… A point of light curving in fast from over the trees, part of the house erupting in flame… The perimeter wall… Forest… Rising to clear hills ahead.
“Shiiit!” Murray breathed shakily beside him.
Where had the light come from? Another craft that had been following them? Something else that had been set up from elsewhere? Hunt stared numbly as the view ahead organized itself into the way back to Shiban, only barely aware of the tirade of words that Nixie was directing at Scirio, or of Scirio answering in even tones, his manner gradually unwinding from the tenseness that had prevailed through the journey out. Murray became attentive to what they were saying, and after a few minutes of questioning and listening, he turned his head toward Hunt.
“The fat guy they blew away was the boss, Grevetz. He was one of ’em-an Ent. Scirio figured that if what we’d said back at his place was true, then he’d be on his way down the tubes along with the rest when he’d outlived his use. So he decided he’d move first, when nobody would be expecting it. Looks like maybe he was right.”
By now, Hunt’s revulsion was subsiding enough for him to start thinking again. He followed, but was still puzzled. “Okay… but how did he know that what we’d said was true? How did he know it wasn’t just a last-ditch try from us and the Thuriens to stop JEVEX from being switched on again? We could have made up the whole thing.”
Murray shook his head. “That’s what all that stuff back at the pad was about.” He indicated the back of Scirio’s head with a nod. “Did you notice how he was acting kinda weird when we walked into his place back in town?”
“Giving Nixie funny looks, you mean? Yes, I did. What did it mean?”
“It seems he knew her, from way back-or at least he knew Nikasha, the person she used to be. What clinched your story was that she’d obviously never seen him before. The real Nikasha would have run a mile, never mind go walking back into the place cool as a penguin’s ass.”
Hunt blinked in astonishment. “You mean she’d been there before?”
Murray talked some more to Nixie, who talked to Scirio. “Nikasha used to be Fatso’s girlfriend-”
“You’re kidding!”
“Only Fatso also happens to have a bitchy wife, see. Anyhow, the two of them-the two dames, that is-had one hell of a fight, and Nikasha tried to wipe Mrs. Fatso out.”
Hunt stared disbelievingly. “To do in the boss’s wife? Her? That’s crazy.”
“Not her. The person who used to be her. If what you’re telling me’s true, she’s gone for keeps now, right? Yeah, do her in. It happened back there in Scirio’s place, where we were before. She stunned Mrs. Fatso with a Jev shooter while she was in the pool, figuring it would look like a heart attack, but it didn’t quite work out. Fatso put her number out, and that was why she did a vanishing act and lost herself in the city. It all happened before I came here-I never knew a thing about it.”
The one way to be sure that Nixie was not putting on an elaborate act for some reason would be to confront her with Grevetz in person, Hunt saw. His rage at the sight of her had been clear enough, and her mystification in the face of it had been something that nobody could have faked.
“And once Scirio knew she was genuine, her recognizing Grevetz as another of her kind was enough to spell out the score,” Hunt said, nodding as it all became clear. He was still shaking, he noticed. From a side window he could see that they were heading back toward Shiban. “So what happens now?” he asked.
Murray shrugged. “Sounds like it’s gonna be war all over the place now, with nobody sure who’s on whose side.”
Hunt wondered what that would mean. Nixie had been recognized at PAC by at least one of the police, and exactly where they stood in the whole business was unclear. “How safe are Danchekker and Gina back at Osaya’s place?” Hunt asked in a worried tone. “Once this news gets back, people are likely to be going crazy everywhere. I don’t like it.”
Murray passed the question on to Scirio. Scirio called some instructions forward, and one of the two men in the front seats spoke into a handset.
“He’s getting them out,” Murray said.
Scirio then went on to speak at greater length, in the course of which Murray’s eyes widened. Finally Murray turned to Hunt. “The way he sees it, the first thing has to be to stop Eubeleus turning on the computer, and then let the Terrans and Thuriens straighten things out. If they put the brakes on the headworld business that’ll be a shame, but if he was about to be run out of it anyway it doesn’t make any difference. He’s a businessman. There are plenty of other lines. He figures that this way he’ll have a better chance of working some kind of deal with the new management than he would have if Fatso’s people took over.”
Hunt frowned uncertainly. “So… what does that translate into? Exactly what is he saying he’s going to do?”
Murray exhaled sharply, then shook his head. “I’m not sure how, but it looks like you’ve pulled it off, Doc. He’s doing what you wanted. He’s gonna get his technical guys to connect VISAR up to their channel into JEVEX.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Danchekker relaxed back into silken cushions in one of the voluminous chairs in Osaya’s lounge, his hands clasped behind his head, and studied the shameless opulence and erotic imagery around him. “You know, I must confess there are times when I feel tempted to consider myself the victim of a misspent youth,” he called over his shoulder toward the open doorway as he heard Gina coming back in. “What tastes these establishments cater to, I fear I might be past daring to imagine.”
Gina appeared, holding two cups of the brew that Hunt had christened ersatz-she’d had to get them from the girls downstairs in Murray’s, since the chef in Osaya’s kitchen only responded to Jevlenese, and the manual controls were a mystery. “Now you can see the kind of hook that JEVEX could be,” she said, closing the door.
Danchekker’s eyes widened suddenly as the full meaning of what she and Sandy had been saying for all this time finally sank home. “My God, I never connected it with things like that!” he exclaimed.
He accepted one of the mugs and conveyed it to a side table. Gina sat down with her own in another of the chairs. She took a sip and tried to relax, but couldn’t. The dragging waiting for something to happen was fraying her nerves.
“Does any of it really matter if you take a long enough view of things?” she asked, mostly just to break the silence. “From the point of view of evolution, I mean. Does anything we do or don’t do really make much difference in the long run to what would have happened anyway?” Then she remembered what she had said to Hunt when they were aboard the Vishnu, about five percent of species surviving and it all being a matter of luck, and admitted to herself that she was only trying to rationalize their situation. It did matter, and they were powerless.
Danchekker’s answer did nothing to assuage her feelings. “Indeed it can. The most minuscule difference in causes can sometimes bring about huge changes in the outcome of a situation. I remember an example that Vic gave me once, when we were discussing highly nonlinear systems.”
“What was that?” Gina asked.
Danchekker settled himself more comfortably, glad to have something else to talk about. “Suppose that you break up the pack of balls on an ideal, frictionless pool table, and that you were able to measure the velocity and direction of every ball with perfect accuracy,” he said. “How far into the future would your computational model continue to predict the subsequent motions with reasonable validity, do you think?”
Gina frowned. “Ideally? For the rest of time, I always thought. Isn’t that right?”
“In theory, yes-which was Laplace’s great claim. But in reality, the mechanism is such an effective amplifier of errors that if you’d ignored the effect of the gravitational pull of a single electron on the edge of the Galaxy, your prediction would be hopelessly wrong after less than a minute.” He nodded at the astonished expression on Gina’s face and warmed to the theme. “You see, what it illustrates is the extraordinary sensitivity of some processes to-”
Just then, a chime sounded and an alluring female voice said something in Jevlenese. Gina and Danchekker looked at each other, puzzled for a second, and then realized that it was Osaya’s house computer. Voices came from the hallway, and a moment later the two girls who had been left in Murray’s apartment appeared, followed by three men. Gina stood up from the chair, uncertain what to expect. Danchekker looked up at them with an expression of defiant resignation, chin outthrust and jaw clamped shut.
A stream of Jevlenese issued from both of the girls at once, accompanied by lots of gesticulating and waving. One of the men, solidly built, with a hard face and narrow, Oriental-like eyes, and dressed in a straight gray jacket and black, roll-neck shirt, uttered a series of sharp, staccato syllables and pointed back toward the outside door.
“It looks as if the party’s moving on somewhere,” Gina said to Danchekker.
“I, ah, rather get the impression that our opinion on the matter isn’t being invited,” Danchekker observed, taking in the looks on the faces of the other two men.
“Right. I get that feeling, too.”
Danchekker put down his mug and rose from the chair. “Very well. Let’s get on with it.”
They followed the three men back outside to the landing. The two girls came down with them as far as Murray’s door, where they waved and disappeared back inside. At least their manner gave no indication of anything threatening. Gina and Danchekker went with the three men down to the lobby and out to where a car in which another two were waiting.
Ten minutes after they departed, a Shiban city police van pulled up on the same spot and disgorged a squad of troopers, who ran clattering in through the apartment-block doors.
The flier landed in a parking area at the rear of some buildings by a traffic highway, where a number of other flying vehicles and ground vehicles were standing. With few words being said, the party disembarked and crossed the lot to a larger craft, which looked like a kind of flying van: windowless, except for the nose compartment, and painted pink and white with garish signs on the sides in Jevlenese.
They boarded through a center door to find half the interior fitted with seats, and in less than a minute they were airborne once again.
Nixie said something to Murray, who gawked in surprise, and they went into a succession of questions and answers.
“What’s it all about?” Hunt asked. -
“These guys must believe in going equipped for the job,” Murray replied. “This thing we’re in is a funeral truck.”
“You’re joking! It looks more like a tour bus for a rock band.”
“It belongs to one of the weirdo sects. It seems they do all their mourning when somebody gets born-on account of all the hassles and shit that the guy’s gonna have to put up with in life. But when he croaks at the end of it all, that’s something to celebrate
. So they make this a party wagon. I guess it takes all kinds, eh?”
They landed again after about the same total flight time as the journey out, suggesting that they were back in Shiban. Sure enough, when they climbed out Hunt saw that they were on a wide platform projecting out from the rounded end of a structure high over the city, facing one of the wide traffic corridors receding away between cliffs of buildings. Above, the structure that they were on met what could be seen to be a solid canopy of artificial sky, probably penetrating through it to form one of the towers visible outside. Far below, the buildings and terraces merged together into the structures of the lower city.
They entered a set of doors and crossed a drab, bare hall of crumbling floor and scratched gray walls. It felt like the kind of place that had gotten tired of existing a long time earlier, and was waiting only to fall apart. A slow, creaking elevator carried them down for what seemed an interminable descent, and they came out in a dark, carpeted hallway that smelled old and musty. From there they went down a flight of stairs to a gallery with corridors and halls going off in several directions. One of the corridors brought them to a doorway. Scirio spoke briefly via a microphone to someone, and the door opened. Inside was a narrow passage that opened into another lined by doors on both sides. The surroundings seemed familiar, but the party moved through without slackening pace, and they were entering the lounge with the bar before Hunt realized that they were back in the Gondola Club, where they had come in search of Baumer.
But this time the bar stools and tables were empty and the place was cleared of people, except for a tall, gangly-limbed man with gray hair and beard, wearing a brown checked suit, who was sitting at one of the tables with two others who looked like khena. He stood up as the newcomers entered, and Scirio launched into a dialogue while he was still crossing the room. The man in the suit seemed agitated, and spoke in a nervous voice, confining himself to answering Scirio’s questions.
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