On Thurien, in the Government Center in the principal city of Thurios, Calazar turned a bewildered face toward the others who had been following events in the village with him. In reality they were still coupled into VISAR at different locations, including Caldwell in Washington, and Leyel Torres aboard the Shapieron at Geerbaine, and not together in the same room as they perceived.
“VISAR, what’s happening?” he demanded.
“The channel through the i-space link from Jevlen has been cut. I don’t have access to there, or to JEVEX.”
“You mean you’ve lost them? Aren’t they still there?” Caldwell had not completely followed the technical dialogue between the Thuriens and VISAR about autonomous personality transfers and temporary state suspension.
“They’re all still there and functioning in the Entoverse,” VISAR replied. “But I can’t communicate with it to talk to them or manipulate events anymore.”
Caldwell looked confused. “But those were just… ‘copies,’ or whatever, weren’t they? The original people are still in the couplers, right?”
“Yes,” VISAR said. “But the capacity of the one channel wasn’t sufficient for me to continually update the original personae-inside the bodies that are in the couplers-in real time. So they were left in a suspended state. The transformed versions that I wrote into the Ent surrogates are the only ones functioning as coherent, conscious identities. In effect, they’re there: inside the matrix on Uttan.”
Caldwell was still uncertain. “But the bodies in the couplers still contain the original personalities, surely. Won’t they reanimate independently?”
“They’ll reanimate, yes,” VISAR said. “But without any knowledge of what happened to the surrogates in the Entoverse.”
“Then we’re okay-” Caldwell caught the looks on the Thuriens’ faces. “No? Why not?”
“I don’t think you quite see our point, Gregg,” Calazar said. “As far as we’re concerned, ever since the transfers down into the Entoverse were made, the beings that VISAR created there are real, bona fide identities in their own right, as much as any other Ent. Whether or not they originated as psychical clones of other beings existing out here in the Exoverse is beside the point. They’re stuck there, and we can’t get them out.”
“Okay, go knock ‘em dead,” VISAR’s voice said. “You’re on.”
Hunt tensed with involuntary apprehension… And then the distant, dreamy feeling brought on when the mind was being flooded by sensations fed in from the machine left him suddenly. He opened his eyes, puzzled. “VISAR?” The booth was silent. He sat up in the recliner. The image of the three terrified figures chained to the stakes, the executioners advancing toward them with knives, and the ragged prophet shouting from below was still vivid in his mind. What had gone wrong?
The door opened and Murray appeared, gesturing frantically. Distant bangs reverberated through the building, like explosions, along with the sounds of running footsteps and more voices. “Move it! Everyone’s getting out. We’ve got cops coming in shooting.”
“What the hell’s it about?” Hunt gasped, jumping up.
“Who knows?”
“VISAR?” Hunt called one last time, just to be sure. Nothing.
“Forget it,” Murray threw back over his shoulder as he disappeared again. “You got cut off.”
Hunt came out into the corridor. Nixie was there already, with Gina emerging from another booth and Murray hauling Danchekker from the door adjacent. Dreadnought and several other Ichena ran past, holding weapons. Keshen, the engineer, was hurrying through from the club with Scirio behind him, shouting orders.
“What’s going on?” Gina asked. “Those three guys? What-”
“No time now,” Murray interrupted. “We’ve got a war on here. Everyone back up the tower. We’re getting out in the hearse.”
As Nixie and Gina hurried away after Keshen, Danchekker glanced at his watch. A strange expression came over his face. He caught Hunt’s sleeve just as Hunt was about to follow the others. “I’m not altogether certain that there’s any point in worrying about those three unfortunates now,” he said. “The episode to which I think you’re referring would appear to be history.”
“What are you talking about?” Hunt asked.
Danchekker tapped his watch. “We coupled into VISAR at approximately 1420 hours, did we not?”
“That’s right,” Murray confirmed, catching the gist as he strove to move them along after the others. “Is that a problem?”
“How long were we in those booths?” Hunt asked.
“An hour, hour and a half. Why? What’s all the mystery? Let’s move our asses outta here while we’ve still got ‘em.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Slowly, it came to the Examiner, as he gazed up at the heavens, what the signs meant. Anger rose within him as he realized how he had been deceived. It was Ethendor who had prophesied that the stars would return to the skies. And no sooner had the stars begun returning than the powers of these strangers who claimed to be emissaries of yet higher gods deserted them.
So the tricks and toys could not have been the works of higher gods at all. It had been an attempt by the lesser gods to deceive the people of Waroth into abandoning the Great Awakening that was their rightful destiny. For the legions of the faithful would destroy the followers of the false gods who were tarnishing Hyperia, and the false gods were afraid. It was all clear to him now. The events that had taken place here in the village of Rakashym had been permitted as a final test of the Examiner’s faith before the Great Awakening. He would not fail.
He turned his eyes back toward the puppets that the false gods had thrown in his path to deflect him from his course. They looked clumsy and foolish now, exposed in their ineptness-”gods” who hadn’t heard of the Great Awakening or of Ethendor, and who didn’t know where Orenash was. Across the square the priests and soldiers, freed from the spell that had bewitched them, were coming back, while the villagers closed in behind them, surly and resentful.
“The power that we use flows into here through channels that-” the first to have arrived began in what sounded like the beginnings of a plea.
“Silence!” The Examiner cut him off with a contemptuous wave. “Thou stands exposed in thy perfidy and helplessness.”
The female who had appeared with him made an imploring gesture. “Look, you have to believe what these people say. I know. I am one of you, from Waroth. I emerged and have come back by the powers they control.
The Examiner turned his back. “These are deceivers who stand exposed before us,” he called to the crowd. “Indeed did Ethendor speak truly.”
The crowd responded:
“Deceivers!”
“Servants of evil!”
“Rakashym must be purged of its taint.”
“Take them! Take them!”
The Examiner spoke to Agamenmon, who had appeared at the front of the soldiers and was waiting for orders. “Seize them and bind them. Rebuild the pyres-one for each of the false prophets who were captured, except those two.” He pointed at Shingen-Hu and Thrax. “Rakashym shall have its fill of burnings.” He indicated the two that he had singled out, and the five impostors sent by the lesser gods. “They shall return with us to Orenash, for the special festivities that Ethendor has prepared. It should be very entertaining.”
The soldiers moved in to separate the two groups. As they began moving, Hunt trod on a piece of one of the runners from the disassembled coach. His foot skidded sideways as if he had stepped on a ball, throwing him off balance and causing him to fall down painfully onto one knee.
“See he who calls himself a messenger from higher gods!” the Examiner called to the crowd, pointing. “Doesn’t even a child know that shoe leather is repelled by mobilium?” The crowd laughed derisively.
Shingen-Hu stooped to help Hunt back to his feet. As he did so, he surreptitiously picked up a couple of slivers of the broken skids of mobilium metal and hid them in a fold of his robe.
From Thurien, Calazar was able to contact Parygol on Uttan through VISAR. But Parygol discovered then that his Thurien caretaker force was cut off from the rest of the planet, and that the facilities they occupied, which they had believed controlled both the planet’s industrial complex and its links to a Jevlen based JEVEX, were suddenly inoperative. Eubeleus had gained control of the system from elsewhere.
Porthik Eesyan, who was occupying a coupler still connected to VISAR and had “joined” Calazar and the others, confirmed their understanding of the situation. “Yes, that’s the way it would work. There’s another version of me still functioning in the Entoverse at this moment-and of all the others, of course. It’s a strange feeling to know it.”
“And you don’t have any idea what’s been happening since you-the other one of you-was transferred in?” Caldwell checked.
“No. The updating was to have been effected when the surrogates were erased and the originals reactivated,” Eesyan said. “But the disconnection happened too abruptly.”
There was a long, brooding silence.
“They’ll be in trouble there, without VISAR,” Calazar said quietly at last.
“I am aware of that,” Eesyan replied. The edge to his voice was unusually sharp for a Thurien. “I happen to have a rather personal stake in the matter.”
“My apologies,” Calazar acknowledged.
Caldwell sat with his craggy jaw clamped in a downturned line, saying nothing. The knowledge that the original Hunt, and Danchekker, and the Marin woman, and the Jevlenese girl were intact and walking about somewhere on Jevlen was not comforting. As Calazar had said, the surrogates were now every bit as real. Caldwell didn’t like the thought that was nagging at the edge of his awareness and which he knew he was refusing to face up to fully: the implication of their being somehow “expendable.” He didn’t like it at all.
Leyel Torres, the Shapieron’s acting commander, looked from one to another of the faces. “We have to do something,” he said simply.
“Without another link into JEVEX, I’m not at all sure there’s much we can do,” Calazar answered.
Torres fidgeted, clearly not satisfied. “How did Hunt manage to get the link that we did have?” he asked.
“Through the Jevlenese criminal ring somehow,” Eesyan replied.
“Could they do it again if we restored contact with them?”
“Only they know that. And they’re loose in Shiban somewhere.” Torres thought for a moment. “VISAR, when you had the connection, did you know where Hunt was in Shiban?”
“Almost certainly the club that they found Baumer in,” VISAR answered. “ZORAC has located it on the city plan from its communications routing codes.”
Torres stared hard at the floor, then looked up suddenly with a resolved air. “There is something that we can do,” he said. “Excuse me, gentlemen. VISAR, disconnect.” And at once he was back in one of the neurocouplers that had been installed aboard the Shapieron. He got up, left the room, and walked through into the ship’s command deck. The crew, who were on standby, stirred at their stations.
“ZORAC, report the ship’s status,” he called. “Flight ready, as instructed.”
“Prepare for immediate takeoff.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Inside the Planetary Administration Center in Shiban, Garuth had been brought to the communications room next to what had recently been his own office suite. One of the main screens of a bank standing in the center of the floor showed Eubeleus’s control center deep beneath the surface of Uttan. Eubeleus had gained control of JEVEX, which was now operational and directing the i-space link carrying the channel into PAC; the Thurien occupying force had been fooled with a dummy system and was now isolated.
“I wanted you to be here to witness the futility of your fool’s errand on Jevlen, and the first stage of our final triumph,” Langerif gloated from the center of his entourage of officers. “Our reports are that the fervor we’ve been building up among the followers of the Axis has served its purpose well. There are thousands of them out there in couplers right now, eagerly waiting for JEVEX’s promised restoration. And tens, hundreds of thousands more will follow as soon as it becomes known that the promise has been fulfilled. By tonight we will have taken Shiban. By tomorrow, Jevlen.”
Garuth remained grimly silent but shifted his attention as Eubeleus himself moved into view on the screen. “A very different state of affairs from your last encounter with Jevlenese,” Eubeleus said. “This time you’re not dealing with the fools who tried to set up the Federation. Did you really believe that you could pit yourselves against manifestations of an intelligence that by its very nature is destined to supplant you?” He paused, seemingly having expected more of a reaction. “I believe you are aware of the method that JEVEX had devised to project itself into the outside universe, of which those like myself are privileged to be the prototypes.”
Garuth said nothing.
On Uttan, an aide approached and stopped a short distance back, making signs to attract Eubeleus’s attention. Eubeleus turned away and raised his chin inquiringly. The aide moved a step forward. “Iduane is in communication with the Prophet now. All is ready in the city.”
Eubeleus nodded and looked back at the screen showing Garuth. “Never mind. You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” he said. Leaving the aide with the rest of those by the screen, he turned away and crossed the floor to the door leading to the coupler bank. In the passageway beyond, he met Iduane coming the other way.
“All’s ready,” Iduane said. “The Prophet is waiting.”
“Take over in the control center,” Eubeleus said, and continued on toward the booths.
Iduane entered the control center. As he passed beneath the overhead gallery surrounding the floor, he saw consternation breaking out around the screen still open to Jevlen, and quickened his pace.
“What’s happening?” he demanded as he joined the group. He saw that another screen had come to life beside the one showing Langerif and Garuth at PAC. It was an outside view of the Thurien spaceport at Geerbaine. He recognized it at once by the sleek, unmistakable, half-mile-high tower of the Shapieron, with its distinctive, swept tail fins, on the pad that it had occupied throughout the period of the Ganymean presence. But now it was moving, sliding upward slowly at first but picking up speed even as he watched.
“What’s happening?” he demanded, hurrying across and joining the group.
One of the aides gestured needlessly. “The Shapieron, on Jevlen. It’s taking off.”
On the screen showing PAC, Langerif was shaking his head, baffled. “The news just came in this second from Geerbame. There was no warning, nothing. It’s just taken off.”
“What does it mean?”
“We don’t know.”
Iduane turned his head to the aide. “Go to the booths, quickly. Get the leader back here. Don’t let him couple into the system yet.” The aide nodded and left at a run.
On the screen from Geerbaine, the view had changed to another showing the starship’s immense shape slowing down again to hang as a black silhouette, looking like some fantastic bird hovering above the Shiban skyline, with the city seemingly shrunken by perspective in the background below. Keeping its nose pointing upward, the ship began moving slowly sideways, over the city.
Bearing sacred implements and emblems of the Green Crescent, the multitude filled the forecourt of the temple of Vandros and spilled out through the gates opening into the grounds from the city. In the sky, stars had begun reappearing; Nieru had brightened. The day of the Great Awakening was at hand. On the stone terrace below the temple steps, the first batch of trembling victims had been led before the stakes, gibbets, blocks, and altars. The executioners had made ready, waiting for the daylight to return and the word to be given.
Above, on a terrace at the top of the steps, flanked by his retinue of priests and seers, Ethendor stood with his arms extended expectantly… and grew more perplexed. Only moments before, the Voice ha
d spoken in his mind again, promising that the time was imminent and that a Great Spirit would speak to Ethendor, confirming his place as the chosen prophet. But not only had the Great Spirit failed to appear; now Ethendor wasn’t getting any responses from the Voice, either.
“What ails the gods thus?” the Arch-Seer murmured, moving up closer behind him. “The current which thou drew still flows, but it has waned to a flicker.”
“I know not,” Ethendor replied. “Have the Examiner and his train returned yet to the city?”
Another of the priests conferred with a lesser priest, who turned to a messenger hovering behind an archway. “They are still awaited at the gates, O Holy One,” the priest relayed back.
No doubt that was it, Ethendor thought to himself. The gods would wait until all the dignitaries and the full complement of heretics for the atonement were present.
“We must await them,” Ethendor said. “Lead the people in more prayers and devotions. I shall return when the Voice speaks to me again.” With that, he went back into the temple.
Eubeleus appeared at the side door of the control center with the aide who had gone to fetch him. He hurried over and took in the view from Geerbaine of the Shapieron drifting slowly over Shiban. “What are they doing in that ship?” he demanded, turning his eyes to Garuth, who was still standing with Langerif on the other screen.
In the PAC communications room, even with the hopelessness that had gripped him only moments before, Garuth felt a surge of exhilaration at the sight of his ship in motion and the message it brought that others were still doing something-although as to what it might be, he was as mystified as anyone else. He looked back to where Eubeleus was glaring out of the screen from Uttan. “You’ll see for yourself, soon enough,” he replied.
Ganymeans had double thumbs on each hand. Behind his back, Garuth crossed all four of them.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
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