Shissik held up two objects. The backpack he tossed over to one side; the watch he held out to her. “You may well need these.”
She didn’t feel the least bit embarrassed, putting on the watch and checking it. “How much did she soak you for them?”
“She tried to gouge, but I got them back for probably the pittance you were paid. Twenty-five credits total.”
She gave a sour laugh. “Why that little crook!” Then she remembered what he had to know first of all. “We had a visitor last night…”
As precisely as she could, she recounted the conversation and gave as good a description as she could manage.
“Well, the jewelry sounds upper class but not to the point where hundreds of wealthy women don’t have similar,” he noted when she’d finished. “The physical description could fit half the population. Still, it doesn’t surprise me. It only surprises me that they would be this bold right here, in this very room, across from the seat of government. I would have expected them to accost you on the street or in one of those clubs. Much easier to control.”
“C’mon, Inspector! I’m—I was a cop, too. I know you have people in those clubs spotting for the tourists. Otherwise any government courier in from out of town would be fresh meat. This is the perfect place, particularly if you know it isn’t bugged or you know where the bugs are and how to defeat them, which I assume is the case here.”
“Well, it’s not attended, but there were no flags on the recording, at least none that anybody reported to me,” he admitted.
“See? Blank out the record, get in before we do, get out quickly, and that’s that. The point is, was she correct? Is this place really indefensible?”
“I would hate to think so,” he told her honestly. “However, events so far have shown a remarkable lack of ability to defend against things in other hexes. We shall see, I suppose.”
“What do you think she meant by saying we’d be taken without a shot being fired, and we’d see it now if we weren’t so new to normal society?”
“I don’t know the answer to that, either. Perhaps it is just empty threats, but…”
“Well, let’s think of it while we have breakfast. Ari, it seems, is still nicely asleep inside, and I have a liking for pabas entrails, and if I eat them when he’s awake, I suffer…” He shrugged, and they went out and floated down to the restaurant level. She got her favorite dish, he got some seasoned sea grain cakes, and they started to eat as Ari began to stir. She wolfed down the dish before he got clear of who, what, and where, but not quite fast enough.
Ugh! Yuk! You aren’t putting those things into my stomach, are you?
It’s my stomach, too, and I can feed it what I want. If you don’t like it, next time you wake up early. Aloud she said, “Ari’s here.”
Too late to stop it and too full to top it off with something he liked and she detested, he settled for coming to the fore. “So, Inspector, you have a group of traitors at high levels. Are you going to root them out?”
“We know some of them,” he told them. “The rest—well, it’s a secret organization but they’re almost all amateurs. I found it interesting that she said that most of the delegation wasn’t their people. It’s an interesting revelation. There’s only a dozen going—the rest will be commuting back and forth from here via the Gate. Not a lot of room in Zone when thousands will be there representing all the races, since only the border areas of Zone are really useful. We’ll be looking closely at any of them. A couple are undergoing personal changes, so it’s hard to tell the physical from the treason sometimes.”
“Really?” This was interesting. “What sort of changes?”
“Well, the two members of the Cabinet who were both male and still young enough to bear kids are undergoing changes to the feminine. That’s not usually the case unless there’s already been a big loss of life, or it’s so stressful that the fear can be cut with a knife. That level’s not here, but it’s going on. A couple of the older guys, including the Premier, who are by far too old for that sort of change, have been seeing medical counselors lately, and all for the same reason. Impotence.”
That got both their attentions, and they were suddenly of one mind.
“Inspector—am I turning—’fem,’ as the broker called it? Physically?”
“I can see some of the signs, but it’s hard to tell with Ming in there, too. I suspect nobody mistook her for a man when she was herself. Still, I could point to areas and say that, yes, it might be the early stages. I’ve had that myself, though; I’ve got early signs now. I’ve had it before. Sometimes it reverses, sometimes it happens. You never know.”
“Inspector, do a very quick research project,” they told him. “Call your office, ask them for current statistics on male-female changes, how many people have reported these changes, how many were female to male as well as male to female, how many older men are being treated for impotence or loss of desire, that sort of thing. I’m sure it can be done without breaking the bank or taking people forever to compile. You have basic computers. I think you may have a bigger problem than it seems.”
Shissik wasn’t sure if they were crazy or not, but they seemed so single-minded that he phoned in the assignment to the Data Section and was told they could probably have raw data in a couple of hours. He told them to go ahead and call him back with the data.
Now they floated out and across the broad plaza to Government Center, a series of not terribly high buildings that were totally artificial but had been built to resemble a grandiose coral reef. There were no living coral reefs in Kalinda; the water temperature was too cold and the shallows too few.
It was, however, not solid, but a series of buildings all blended together, giving a melted appearance; inside, it was quite busy although not terribly crowded.
They were escorted to a large office with real, huge fancy doors—a sign of status—and when the doors opened, they were almost sucked into a vast and opulent office. A huge shield with the oval and diamond was mounted on the back wall, and in front was a massive desk with very little on it, the mark of a Very Important Politician.
He was markedly older than most Kalindans they’d met, save a few seen in the alleys and clubs the previous evening, but he was immaculate right down to his professional smile. “Come in, come in! I am Ju Kwentza, Minister of the Interior. Inspector—please. Over there. I want to speak to this remarkable citizen—er, citizens, I suppose.”
And talk he did, although he did a little listening. Both of them wondered if he had impotence and loss of desire. Probably, but he was the one person in government who would never show up on a statistical table. The Ministry of the Interior, after all, ran the national police, both public and secret, and much of the internal security apparatus as well.
Finally he finished, they said a few more pleasantries, and he pushed a buzzer that brought in a young woman with a bunch of passes hung around her neck.
“Mellik, here, will give you passes. Then I think you should meet with the other from your region. We are most curious to see what effect it will have on her. So far not even drug therapy has been able to bring out very much. She’s rather passive, and not faking, I can assure you of that. We hope that perhaps getting you two, or three, or whatever, together might bring out something locked away.”
Ari put on the pass, as did Shissik, and they followed Mellik down a series of tubular corridors, through a number of security checkpoints—the guards, at least, seemed very military, and their weapons looked formidable—to a room with a lot of amenities but no particular view. A young female was inside, wearing an elaborate headset, and she seemed off in a world of her own.
“What is that she is using?” Ari asked Mellik.
“It is called an indoc, short for ‘indoctrinator,’ although that’s not what it’s being used for. She has been almost desperate to learn how to read Kalindan—you can see some children’s schoolbooks over there. This device can inject a great deal of rote memory material directly into the mind
’s memory sectors and tie it in with the developing skill. It is generally used on those with grave reading problems or those who have been in situations where they never learned. It’s a miracle worker. But it has never, to my knowledge, been tried on someone not born and raised here.”
Originally developed for the Interior Ministry, I’d bet, for different purposes, Ming noted to Ari.
“Should we disturb her now, in mid-trance?” Ming asked Mellik, concerned about scrambling things up. A similar but much more sophisticated device, and in fact a whole family of devices, was common in the Realm and wouldn’t do harm unless you designed it to do so, but you never knew about such gadgets.
“It wouldn’t do much except truncate the lesson,” Mellik assured her. “But we’ll wait. The light is flashing on the control panel there in front of her. It’s almost done. Come.”
The program ended just as they entered, but for a moment the Other just floated there, eyes closed.
The moment Ari and Ming came close, they could feel the attraction, a sense of connection, a tie.
The Other could feel it, too, it seemed, because suddenly her eyes opened and she looked at the newcomer in front of her and gasped. “I know you,” she said, sounding somewhat confused. “Not like this, though. Like—Like…”
“Do you have any memories of us together?” Ming asked her, taking over again, this time with Ari’s agreement. “Do you remember any scenes? Any thoughts? Any names?”
The Other shook off the interrogation. It was too much too fast. “Remember—sisters,” she said. “Not sisters. Sisters who were one but not sisters. It’s—confused.”
Great! Ari said sarcastically. Looks like we got the Alpha or Beta model. No wonder she can’t remember much. Without the computer she’s nothing!
The Other gave a gasp and looked strangely at the newcomer. “There is—-someone else? How can there be you and not you? I—I do not understand.”
She heard me! Or at least sensed me! Ari exclaimed to Ming. Are you sure you want to go any further with this?
The Other looked totally confused, then reached out and grabbed their hand and held it, hard, in a firm handshake.
They both felt a connection, then an extreme shock, as if a bolt of electricity had hit them. A whole series of strange, bizarre images passed between them, back and forth, and they felt as if in a churning whirlpool, and were both too dizzy and too powerless to get out.
As soon as it happened, both observers saw the two stiffen and then seem to lapse into unconsciousness. Immediately, Mellik and Shissik rushed to them, attempting unsuccessfully to loosen the death grip and pry the two apart. Then each took one and they pulled, trying to pry them apart, but failing.
“Get a doctor down here to knock ’em out, and get some of the biggest guards you can!” Shissik snapped to Mellik. “We’ve got to break this up!”
But drugs appeared to do nothing, and it was still beyond their strength to separate them. One particularly beefy guard suggested chopping the hands off, but this was rejected as being too late to do much good.
It went on for almost three hours, but at the end the grips of each loosened on their own and both bodies floated in place, unconscious. Perhaps because of the drugs, but more likely due to shock, they didn’t wake up for a while. When they did, it was together.
For Ari and Ming, finding each other still in the same head came as a bizarre relief. They would have preferred separates, but not in the state they were in now, and not with somebody else also lurking.
What the hell was that? I feel positively drained! Ming exclaimed.
I’m not sure. For a time, I thought I was in her body, then back here, but then I got too dizzy and passed out.
They heard shouting, then Shissik rushed into the room, stopped and looked at them, even as a medic arrived to examine them.
“Who are you?” the Inspector asked.
“Ari—and Ming. Same as before. At least, I think we are. You’ll have to be the judge of that. How would we know?”
“Hmm… Recount my conversation with Ming about your visitor. As much detail as you can, including what breakfast was like.”
Ari did so, suitably outraged at the breakfast choice, as always.
Shissik then asked to speak to Ming, and quizzed her on earlier conversations and on her background. Finally he asked her, “You are satisfied that you are back to normal and that Ari is Ari?”
“Yes, of course! Why do you ask?”
They were suddenly aware of another presence behind them, and managed to get out of the medic’s examination long enough to turn and gasp.
“Hey! Wait a minute! We haven’t been Kalindan that long, but I’d swear that that’s our body!” Ari exclaimed.
“No, it’s our body,” the other one responded. “You are the Other.”
Ari and Ming looked at Shissik, who nodded. “I’m afraid so. You’re in the young female’s head. The one that didn’t appear to have anything in it. And they seem to have the same information and the same memory and the same dual personalities that you now do.”
“My God! How is that possible? I thought we were a one of a kind Well of Souls processing error!” Ming II responded.
“Apparently something inside the other one connected and caused the entire contents of your brain to be copied as a mirror image to the brain of the other here,” Shissik told them. “It certainly would have been more practical if just one of you had transferred, but it’s done. It will be interesting to discover if there are any variations in the two of you. There seems to be some. They woke up before you did.”
“Then—we’re the copy!” Ming II asked, incredulous. “I don’t feel like a copy!”
“Me neither,” Ari put in.
“We must assume so. The question is, how exact a copy are you two? If something, some routine, was lurking inside the Other waiting for such a contact, where is that ‘something’ now? And what is it?”
“But—But…” There was no making sense of this.
“And by the way,” Ari I said to them, “our hunch was right. There’s been a nationwide surge of conversions to female, a regular epidemic of loss of desire and impotence on the part of any male too old to change over. As of two weeks ago, there has not been one single reported case of female to male. In fact, even some well along are reversing. And as all births are gender neutral until puberty, there are no new males from that quarter either.
“My God! That’s what the woman was talking about, then! Slow genocide. They won’t even have to starve us. A nation of females. No more children. And they alone have the cure, I bet. How is this possible! I thought the all-powerful Well of Souls computer was supposed to make this kind of imbalance impossible!”
“We don’t have an explanation, not yet,” Shissik told them. “Not until the meeting next week will we hear the best suppositions about it. There is some feeling, though, that when you all were reprocessed through the Well you somehow—broke it. There is supposedly some sort of fix-it deity or computer repairman or some such that comes and fixes it when it breaks, but if he’s here, there’s no sign of it. It may well be that the Well doesn’t know that anything’s wrong…
South Zone
Around much of the southern hemisphere, they gathered up their staffs and runners and went to the centers of their hexes, the movers and shakers, the foreign and defense chiefs, often the political chiefs and their top aides. All else was being coordinated from back in their home capitals, using the Well Gate to get messages and requests for consultations and data back to them as things proceeded.
Both sets of Kalindans were there with the others, notably Mellik, who turned out to be a psychologist working for Interior, basically keeping an eye on them, as well as the Premier, Magnosik; Corrivit the Defense Minister; and Chaskrit, Foreign Minister. All the high officials were there with two aides, making for a larger delegation than was specified. They didn’t care, nor did most of the other races, it appeared. They brought whoever they wanted and st
uffed them in someplace.
There was room, of course. Not everybody showed up, including, thankfully, anyone from Chalidang, although with some cheek, there was a small Cromlin delegation. These somewhat colorful lobsterlike creatures had not been directly involved as yet in any conflict, but it turned out that the number three in the delegation was in fact a reprocessed one himself, and had been physically, and remained mentally, Josich the Emperor Hadun’s half brother.
Nakitti thought it was a damned weird conference anyway. More critters than you could imagine, and no auditorium for more than a hundred people who all breathed the same stuff. Basically, it was done on monitors beamed to the reception rooms of the embassies, so there wasn’t a lot of interaction except in the corridors and going to and from the Zone Gate. There was a constant stream of creatures, some not very friendly, in a two-way parade.
For a semitech hex, the Ochoan Embassy was plush and high tech. Even a lot of the nontech hexes enjoyed the luxuries of technological comfort here, which often spoiled those posted here for going back home. For instance, there was a system for ordering or obtaining whatever food and drink you liked; no need to send home. Bring your favorite delicacies, have them zapped by the computerized stations, and within minutes it became part of the database. Then, anytime you wanted it, you just ordered it and there it was, perfectly synthesized and delivered to a food station near you. Better than home, really, because you knew this hadn’t been anywhere else, and thus contained only pure food. Wines? Give the machine a sample, and it would deliver bottles or jars as required. There was little this system couldn’t handle except volume; it wasn’t designed for mobs of people per embassy, and the more orders that came in at once, the slower the system became. For that reason, some of the hall traffic was simply going home for dinner; others were bringing catering, some of which, on the way to being eaten, tried to eat other creatures going by.
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