Entoverse g-4

by James P. Hogan

  Then, the smoke dispersed to unveil VISAR’s creation. Rotating! And this time, Hunt conceded, even with his experience of the machine’s abilities, VISAR had exceeded itself. It was the most magnificent carnival carousel that he had ever seen, with horses, cockerels, swans, and tigers, all moving up and down as they passed by and around under a great, brilliantly colored canopy decked with row after row of winking lights. And in the center of it all, an enormous steam Wurlitzer pounded and thrummed, flywheel spinning, slide valves popping, with shafts and belts connected to an incredible Rube Goldberg concoction of rocking cranks, syncopating levers, undulating cams, whirling gear trains, and nodding tappets, all acting out its cycle of interlocked motions with a complexity and ingenuity that astonished even Hunt.

  A hushed murmur, mixing awe, reverence, and fear, swept through the crowd. The priests were standing transfixed. Some of the soldiers fell to their knees, bowing their heads to the ground, and here and there among the crowd others followed their example. Agamemnon, who had extricated himself again, straightened up slowly and stared wide-eyed. A strange, ululating, high-toned chant went up from among the prisoners.

  The carousel began slowing, though the music continued. As the turntable made its final revolution before coming to rest, it brought two figures into view, seated on a pair of the animals-the only place VISAR could find to put them. Hunt’s face split into an uncontrollable grin as he saw Danchekker stepping down from a brightly colored peacock, robed like a Roman senator, complete with crown of laurel leaves, but still, incongruously, wearing his gold-rimmed spectacles. Behind him, dismounting from a rhinoceros, was Gina, in sandals and the simple, flimsy, plain white shift of a slave girl, and, God alone-or in this case, VISAR-knew why, carrying a wine jar.

  It wasn’t a time for hesitation or timidity. Mustering all his composure and holding himself regally erect, Danchekker moved to the edge of the turntable and stood surveying the scene like a god descended from Olympus. Gina moved to stand a pace behind, while in the background the music faded. “Well?” he demanded after the silence had endured for several seconds. “Can’t you do any better than just stand there wearing those infuriating, cretinous expressions?”

  Several more absolutely still, endless seconds dragged by.

  Then, the Examiner himself dropped down onto one knee, threw up his arms, and cried out, “Hail, Father of the Gods! This day has the magic of Hyperia descended upon Waroth. Indeed hast the Master whom we reviled spoken truly!”

  “Hail! Hail!” those in the crowd immediately in front of Danchekker echoed, and threw themselves down before them.

  Others took up the cry.

  “Hail, Father of Gods!”

  “Lighter of the heavens!”

  “Master of objects that spin!”

  Danchekker stepped down to the ground, moved a pace forward, and waited for Gina to hop down behind. Then, clasping his robe where his lapels would normally be and followed by his slave, he strode majestically across the square while the crowd parted and adulating figures shouted out praises and prostrated themselves as he passed. By the time he came to where Hunt, Nixie, and Eesyan were standing, and turned to look back, the whole square was down on its knees, faces to the ground.

  Across the square, the carousel started up again, and the music resumed. Danchekker looked on and gave a satisfied nod. “No, Dr. Hunt. I, I rather think, am the better judge of organic psychology,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  “Generator complexes three and five are now up to full power and can be switched into the system,” an aide reported from another part of Uttan. “Seven is being brought up to standby as a backup. Everything is on schedule.”

  From behind the supervisor’s chair in the real JEVEX primary control center, Eubeleus returned a curt nod. “How does it look at this end?” he asked Iduane, who was standing a short distance away, checking reports and status indicators.

  “Matching positive. We can initiate reintegration at any time.”

  Eubeleus leaned back and surveyed the other consoles and operator positions around the floor. Everything was under control and orderly. Across the planet, the Thurien fools who thought they were in control of the Uttan system because JEVEX was shut down and isolated far away on Jevlen didn’t even know they were standing right on top of it. They would very soon find out.

  “And how are events inside?”

  “The last time I contacted our Prophet, they were progressing well,” Iduane answered. “They’re rounding up all the heretics for the great auto-da-fé. They should be all fired up to do a fine job on Jevlen for us when they start coming out.”

  Eubeleus nodded again, distantly. None of it was real, of course. It was simply an elaborate software simulation that JEVEX had created to train and orient the software identities that it had devised to extend itself into the outside universe. But those identities became real when they overwrote the personalities of physical users coupled into the system. Such was JEVEX’s method for externalizing its dimensions of existence-a solution which Eubeleus had no hesitation in acclaiming as a feat of genius. After all, wasn’t he a manifestation of it?

  “When the time comes for the Prophet to announce the Great Awakening, I would like to be in control of him myself,” Eubeleus said. “It would be gratifying to participate in the culmination of the project-personally, as it were.”

  “As you wish,” Iduane agreed.

  Eubeleus stared at the console with a distant look, slipping into one of his rare reflective moods. “It’s difficult to believe that we, ourselves, originated like that. I look for any hint of nostalgia every time I connect into one of them, but there really isn’t any. I don’t recall anything of what I was down there before my emergence. There must be-” His words were interrupted by a priority tone from the console. He nodded toward the video pickup. “Yes?”

  One of the screens came to life to show the face of another of his aides, elsewhere in the complex. “My apologies. We have a grade one coming in from Shiban PAC, on Jevlen.”

  “Very well.” The image changed to show the face of Langerif. He looked worried. “What?” Eubeleus demanded.

  “News has just come in here that Grevetz has been assassinated,” Langerif said.

  Eubeleus came around the chair and sat down, glaring at the screen. “When did it happen? Do you know who did it?”

  “At his villa in the Cerberan, just over an hour ago. His man who runs the north side did it: the one they call Scirio.”

  “How?”

  “They came down in a flier and wiped out him and a bunch of his people on the pad. Then they demolished virtually the entire place. There was no provocation or warning. It was a massacre.”

  “I always thought Scirio was reliable. What was it, another of their family squabbles?”

  “We’re not sure. There’s more. The hooker from the city, the one who was here at PAC-she was with them. We have the video record from the house surveillance system.”

  “She’s the one who’s been helping the Terrans,” Iduane murmured. He had moved across from where he had been standing and was watching from beside Eubeleus’s chair.

  Langerif nodded from the screen. “There has to be some kind of connection, but right at this moment we don’t know what.” Eubeleus’s frown deepened with suspicion. “What kind of operations does this Scirio specialize in?” he asked.

  “Protection and retaliation for a price. Since the Ganymeans took over, he’s been getting big in the luxury black market, especially for high-paying headworlders. He runs a number of clubs as fronts in the city.”

  “Headworlders?” Eubeleus stared back at the screen fixedly. Then his expression slowly changed to one of alarm. “That means he has access to an i-channel to Uttan. Into JEVEX.”

  Langerif talked to somebody offscreen, then looked back. “Yes. Several of them, apparently.”

  Eubeleus went through the sequence of events in his head. The Terran scientists from UNSA, Hunt and Danchekker bot
h of whom had played key roles in thwarting the Federation, had come to Jevlen ostensibly as part of a scientific mission, which had turned out to be an undercover assignment to investigate what was afflicting the Jevlenese. After a lot of secret work in PAC that Eubeleus’s people had not been able to penetrate, the scientists had taken up with, of all people, an khena hoodlum. What could they be interested in? But Scirio had access into JEVEX. And-merely by coincidence?-no sooner had they talked to Scirio than he exterminated an awakener, who, it just so happened, had been due to liquidate all of the Ichena’s outsider management as soon as the takeover was completed.

  Euebeleus jerked his head around sharply toward Iduane. “Commence reintegration of JEVEX.”

  “Right now?”

  “At once. As soon as you reach the requisite level, I want a complete check of all core functions. Scan for active i-space links from Jevlen and deactivate all of them.” Eubeleus looked back at Langerif, on the screen. “Get a list of all of the establishments of Scirio’s that have functioning couplers. Get men out to each of them and shut them down. All of them, do you understand? You’ll find the girl and the missing Terrans at one of them. When you do, take them back to PAC. Under no circumstances are they to have any means of accessing JEVEX. And I expect no blundering from anyone there this time.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  The carousel whirled merrily beneath bright lights in the village square, carrying its train of enraptured priests, dignitaries, and soldiers, including Agamemnon, who was planted astride a white horse with a red bridle. Elsewhere, crowds of villagers gaped in awe at a Newcomen pump and steam engine, complete with ten-foot-diameter toothed flywheel, an arrangement of revolving cages within revolving cages within a revolving cage, which spun multiple-core submarine cables, and a Budweiser beer-bottling machine. Shingen-Hu, the new deputy lord of Creation, cleansed and groomed courtesy of VISAR, and wearing fresh clothes, stood with Eesyan, arms folded on his chest, absorbing the wonders of the new Power and adjusting himself to the feeling of being its chosen agent. Thrax and the rest of the ex-heretics stood in a group to one side, listening reverently while the emissaries of the True Gods revealed the Word that they had been sent to deliver.

  “Until we’ve sorted out what to do about it at the other end, we don’t want anyone else rising up out of here on the currents,” Hunt told the Examiner. The sphere that VISAR had created to represent the Entoverse symbolically, like a crystal ball, illustrated the point. It had a miniature representation of the local world inside, and around the outside, a lot of tiny red figures attached by threads coming out of their heads. “There are other beings out there, like you. And every time somebody from here arises, one of them is wiped out.” Inside the crystal ball, a mini-Ent soared upward to the surface, vanished into one of the threads, and a moment later appeared at the other end, on the outside. The red figure that had been attached there fell over and turned black.

  “An angel must be sacrificed to make room for each who arises to Hyperia?” the Examiner asked, looking troubled.

  “If you want to put it that way, yes,” Hunt said.

  “In addition, there appear to be certain compatibility problems between Warothian mental configurations and human nervous systems, which frequently result in breakdown and make the transference a risky affair,” Danchekker informed the Examiner. The Examiner nodded respectfully, not having mastered the intricacies of this new ecclesiastical language yet.

  “Angels newly emerged into Hyperia are often troubled,” Nixie supplied. A step behind the Examiner, the village headman followed it all humbly.

  “Then what of the Great Awakening that has been foretold?” the Examiner asked. “If what thou sayest is true, then many angels shall fall, and great will be the woe among our multitudes due to join the Arisen.”

  “What Great Awakening is this?” Gina asked.

  The Examiner seemed surprised. “The goddess knows not?”

  “She means, what was the version that was given to you?” Hunt explained.

  “Ethendor, who was the instrument of the fallen gods, prophesied a Great Awakening, when the stars shall shine again and currents return more numerous than ever before, and the people shall arise into Hyperia in their multitudes,” the Examiner recited.

  “The invasion,” Hunt said, looking at the others. “It looks as if we were right. Eubeleus was all set to bring them out in hordes.”

  “When is this supposed to happen?” Danchekker asked; then he added hastily, “According to what you were told.”

  “When the sun itself shines strong once more, and daylight returns to the lands of Waroth,” the Examiner replied. “Thus was it spoken.”

  Hunt looked at Nixie, his face serious. “Who is this Ethendor?”

  “The high priest in Orenash, the main city in this part. Apparently he ordered the crackdown on Shingen-Hu and the rest that these guys were carrying out.”

  “Where is this place?”

  “How far are we from Orenash?” Nixie asked the village headman.

  “Half a day’s ride by drodhz sled.” The headman obviously thought that gods should have known; but he wasn’t about to make an issue out of it.

  “Then that’s where it’ll all happen,” Hunt said. “We can leave the carnival here and be on our way. There mightn’t be a lot of time.” The Examiner was growing puzzled as he listened. “Thou must journey to Orenash? Then the dark masters whom Ethendor serves are not yet truly fallen?”

  Hunt shook his head. “Not yet, I’m afraid. We’ve still got some work to do. But at least this has given us a better idea of how to go about it.” He looked at Danchekker and Gina. “I think the best thing would be-”

  At that moment, the village headman suddenly pointed skyward. “The stars! See, the stars are returning!”

  Everyone looked up. “VISAR, cut the lights,” Hunt said after a moment. The lamps on the posts that had appeared around the village square went out. Several bright stars were shining in the twilit sky. “Were those there when we arrived?” Hunt asked Nixie.

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t notice,” she confessed.

  “Eesyan, did you…“ Hunt’s voice trailed away as the Wurlitzer music in the background ceased suddenly. He turned and looked across the square. The carousel had stopped, pitching the startled passengers on its revolving menagerie forward onto the necks of their mounts and, in some instances, off onto the floor. The steam engine, cable spinner, and bottling machine were all frozen in silent immobility. Already, people in the crowd were muttering discontentedly and giving each other puzzled looks. “What’s going on?” Hunt demanded, jerking his head back around bemusedly.

  “They were just props,” Eesyan said, but in a puzzled, faraway voice, as if still trying to work it out himself. “There was no internal motive source. VISAR was causing them to operate, externally.”

  “VISAR, what is the meaning of this?” Danchekker demanded. Hunt waited, then looked at Danchekker uneasily. “VISAR?” he repeated. There was no response.

  Gina shook her head in sudden alarm as the implication hit her. “We’ve lost the connection?” she said, turning her head toward Eesyan. “You mean we don’t have VISAR to back us up anymore?”

  “Worse than that,” the Thurien told them somberly. “We don’t have a way back.”

  Mystified, Keshen, the Jevlenese engineer in the pay of the Ichena, frowned at the monitor displays and stabbed repeatedly at the panel controls in the communications room at the rear of the Gondola. “What is this? The connection’s gone.”

  Scirio heard the commotion from the room outside, where he was sitting at a table, snatching a drink with Murray and several khena. Frowning, he got up and walked over. “What is it?” he asked through the doorway.

  “The beam from Thurien has gone down. We’ve lost the connection to JEVEX, too.” Keshen sat back and tossed up his hands. “That’s it. Zilch.”

  “There’s nothing you can do?”

  “What can I do? Somebody’s
cut the links. They’re dead.”

  In the room behind, the others were on their feet. Scirio bit his lip, thinking furiously. He hadn’t expected repercussions so quickly. Maybe Grevetz had had connections that even he hadn’t known about. And they would need to be high-level connections for this to have happened. He had backed what had sounded like the winning side; now it was all a mess. Did the freaks from inside JEVEX that these Terrans had talked about own the whole city already?

  Fendro, the club manager, who had been out in the reception office, burst into the far side of the club’s main lounge through the door from the front passage.

  “Boss! Boss! Where’s Scirio?”

  Scirio went back out to the lounge. “What?”

  Fendro pointed excitedly back toward the front entrance. “Cops! There’s cops outside like walking artillery. No messing. I mean, they’re coming in!” A series of solid concussions sounded from the front of the club to emphasize the point.

  Another of the staff appeared from the back. “They’ve got the yard covered. Ain’t no way out that way.”

  “Shit,” Scirio muttered. What had he stirred up now? “Okay, look, take a couple of guys, get back up front, and try to stall them there. Speedball, Beans, dig in here to cover Fendy when they pull back. We’ll go on up the tower to move out the hearse. Split as soon as you get three beeps on the box. Blow this place to hold ‘em if you have to.”

  Murray waved along the corridor in the direction of the booths. “What about the guys dreaming in there?”

  “You brought ‘em here. They’re your problem. If you want ‘em out of here, get ‘em up the tower. We’re getting out.”