Entoverse

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

A mighty roar of cheers, shouts, songs, and praises swept over the crowd as the twilight turned to day and the city stood revealed in its full extent and color. To Hunt’s eyes it was a strange mixture of classical colonnades, spires and minarets of a vaguely Eastern flavor, and massive, terraced pyramids that looked Aztec, with materials varying from polished white, like marble, to crude dwellings of brown and muddy yellow. There were arches framing many of the smaller side alleys, and high bridges that could have been aqueducts. The dress of the people was a mixture of ancient and medieval, consisting in some places of long robes and skirted tunics, in others of hooded jerkins and coarse coats. More riders formed up on either side of the train, and the cavalcade wound its way through the packed streets toward a high structure on a rocky hill, surrounded by an inner wall.

“What does this mean?” Nixie asked Hunt. “The daylight returning. What has happened outside?”

“JEVEX is operational again,” Hunt told her soberly.

She looked at him with an uncertain expression. “Is there anything they can do, now, outside? Will it still be possible for VISAR to reconnect?”

Gina was watching with a tense look. Hunt said nothing.

“JEVEX will be checking for access attempts,” Eesyan said expressionlessly.

Nixie looked up, and a strange, distant expression came over her face. After several seconds it became grave.

Hunt stared at her. “What is it? Nixie, can you hear me?”

“The sky is dense with currents. There must be thousands waiting, coupled into the system in Shiban.”

Hunt looked up at the sky. It looked normal. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“You wouldn’t.”

They passed through a gate in the inner wall to a wide space that was as packed as the streets outside. Before them was the mount, its base hidden among elaborately ornamented buildings and statues. Above, its mass was carved into a pyramid with high, wide steps taking up most of the side facing the gate, and higher up, a summit of vertical walls topped by a dome surrounded by smaller spires. At the top of the steps was a terrace, upon which a group of figures in high headdresses and white and red robes stood arrayed about a central one in gold, standing with his arms extended. A larger terrace near the base of the steps had been prepared with stakes and their gruesome devices of execution, while below, scores of bruised and tattered shapes stood herded forlornly behind a line of stern-faced soldiers.

The carts drew up in a cleared area before the soldiers. The Examiner and his retinue climbed importantly out ahead, while the guards disembarked the last batch of victims. Hunt tried to tell himself that this wasn’t really what it seemed: He was in another realm, outside this whole insane world that he thought he was seeing. He would still be there, after whatever was to happen had happened… But it didn’t do a lot of good. From where he was viewing the situation, the intellectualizing wasn’t convincing.

Through the eyes of Ethendor, Eubeleus gazed out upon the scene and saw that his triumph was complete. For a moment longer he stood, posing high above the crowd, his robes of gold throwing back the sunlight. Then he advanced slowly to the edge of the platform at the top of the steps, extended his arms wide, and turned grandly to take in first one side of the temple court, then the other.

“Citizens of Orenash, people of Waroth…”

Quiet fell upon the crowd and spread across the sea of faces like oil calming turbulent waters. All became still.

Below, Hunt and the others stood and exchanged final, resigned looks.

And then a low, pulsating, throbbing sound came intermittently through the silence: a whisper, rising and falling about the threshold of hearing as it was carried on the breeze coming over the city. Hunt’s head jerked around sharply as the murmur grew louder and more distinct. High above, Ethendor looked up, frowning. Inside the high priest’s mind, Eubeleus, nonplussed, momentarily lost direction. This wasn’t right at all.

The sound intensified, coming closer: a steady droning now, punctuated by the rhythmic thwacking of solid matter beating air. Disbelief flooded into Hunt’s face. There was only one thing he knew that made a sound like that. He stared in the direction that it was coming from, hardly daring to let his hopes rise… And then he heard the cries of terror from the crowds beyond the wall, outside in the city.

The inhabitants of Waroth had never seen a 1960s vintage, Boeing Vertol CH-47 Chinook, twin tandem-rotor, turbine-driven, troop-transport and supply helicopter. As it came in low over the temple wall, shrieks and wails went up from all sides. Some of the people threw themselves down on the ground; others were rushing this way and that, gibbering in panic. The dignitaries and soldiers who had come from Rakashym stood transfixed, not knowing what to make of this sudden reappearance of the power they had seen manifested before.

Danchekker, who had been managing to sustain an astonishing calm throughout, gave an approving nod. “Ah, yes. And about time, too,” he said. “It would appear that our alter egos have finally managed to get themselves organized. I’m pleased to see that we’re not losing our touch, Vic.”

Beside Hunt, Gina was sobbing tears of relief. “I never thought it would be possible to fall in love with a computer,” she choked.

Hunt found himself so drained suddenly that he was unable to manage the grin that he tried to force, and none of the flippant words that came into his head would form. He brought a hand up to his mouth and discovered that he was shaking. “Did you enjoy your vacation, VISAR?” was all he could mutter finally.

“Bit of a technical hitch out here,” the familiar voice replied in his head. “It’s all under control now. I presume the details can wait until later.”

Above them, Ethendor was coming down the temple steps almost at a run, his face writhing in fury and incomprehension. Some of the other priests were trailing after him, while the rest remained gripped by fear and consternation on the platform above.

The Chinook swung around to hover broadside-on to the temple above the cringing throng. Its large side door was open, and framed in the opening stood the figures of Shingen-Hu and Thrax, gazing down lordlike and majestically, borne from the gods.

It had been a test, the Examiner saw. He would not fail. “Hail to the Chosen One, indeed true messenger of the highest gods!” he exalted, going down onto both knees this time. Around him the other dignitaries and soldiers who had come from Rakashym took up the cry and followed suit.

Ethendor stormed out onto the terrace below the steps, flung back his robe and aimed his arms up at Shingen-Hu. Moving reflexively in self-defense, Shingen-Hu pointed back, and all the power that had been focused within him by the intensity of the moment went into the bolt that flashed downward before Ethendor could concentrate his will. The figure of the high priest went rigid and became incandescent. From below, Hunt and his companions watched in horrified fascination.

And then, a very peculiar thing happened.

The shock of psychic energy that annihilated the mind that had been Ethendor propagated back along the current perfusing it and out through the attached neural coupler into the brain of Eubeleus. And since the system controlling the coupler was now under the direction not of JEVEX but VISAR, VISAR saw the configuration of mental constructs that formed the person of Eubeleus beginning to dislocate and come apart.

VISAR’s basic programming gave it a nature that sought to protect and preserve life. There was nothing it could do to save Ethendor, for what had been Ethendor was gone; and the milliseconds that it had to consider what could be done about Eubeleus gave little opportunity for innovation or profound reflections on possible consequences. It used the tools that it had. And the only way it knew to preserve a human personality was to inject it, while it was still functioning as a coherent whole, into an artificial Ent-being-which VISAR promptly wrote into the Entoverse. For the same reasons why the surrogates of Hunt and the others looked to them as their human forms looked in the Exoverse, the Eubeleus surrogate looked like Eubeleus.

Who found himself suddenly at the foot of the temple steps, clad in a Roman toga, standing beside the smoldering heap that moments before had been Ethendor, and staring at a twin-rotor helicopter hovering over the petrified crowd.

He stood gaping down at himself and from side to side, confused and bewildered, while the priests who had followed Ethendor down the steps backed away, terrified… And then his mouth fell open as he recognized for the first time the group of figures who were standing a short distance below.

“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “This can’t be! How could you be here?”

“Hello, Eubeleus!” Hunt called back cheerfully. “We seem to have this habit of showing up in the oddest places, don’t we?” He managed to look nonchalant, but inside he was as mystified as to how Eubeleus came to be there as Eubeleus himself seemed to be.

“JEVEX, what is the meaning of this?” Eubeleus demanded savagely.

“Sorry, but the system is no longer operating under that management,” came the reply. “This is your new, friendly, integrated computer service, VISAR, brought to you at no charge all the way from Thurien. Have a nice day.”

“That is not possible!”

“What else can I tell you?”

Eubeleus came to the edge of the terrace and screamed down at the soldiers. “Kill them! I command you, kill every one of them!” The soldiers’ weapons turned into party squeakers and candy canes. Around where Eubeleus was standing, the pyres, gibbets, and instruments of torture became a garden swing set, seesaw, and slide; some lawn ornaments, a Christmas tree, and a beach umbrella.

“Just not one of your days, is it, Eubeleus?” Hunt observed.

“You forget-here, I command powers!” Eubeleus snarled, leveling a finger at Hunt. A ray of pale yellow light shot out of his fingertip; but after traveling about three feet it stopped in a blob, which spun itself tauntingly into a disk, became a custard pie, and flew back into Eubeleus’s face. VISAR freed and cleaned up all the captives, and then proceeded to turn the helmets of the soldiers into assorted hats and bonnets and their armor into corsets and negligees, and painted red noses and clown faces on the priests.

“VISAR, what in hell’s happening?” Hunt asked. “How did he get here?”

“He was coupled into the cheerleader who got fried. There’s just a vegetable left in the coupler on Uttan. What else could I do?”

In the temple forecourt, the Chinook landed, and Shingen-Hu descended to the ground, accompanied by his acolyte, while crowd, soldiers, and dignitaries alike prostrated themselves.

Hunt looked at the others. “I think this place has got itself a reliable chief executive now. Why don’t we get out now, before things get complicated, and let him start running things his own way from the beginning?”

“Your originals think so, too,” VISAR said. “They can’t wait to find out what happened.”

“My own feelings also,” Eesyan agreed. “In fact, since my original is already in a coupler on Thurien, I can be the first, right now.” He looked around the group. “This has been a strange experience. I look forward to meeting you all again under more familiar conditions, when we can no doubt discuss the philosophical issues. Until then…“ He left it unfinished. The details of his body faded, leaving just his shape outlined in featureless white; it persisted for a moment, and then was gone.

Aboard the Shapieron, Hunt and the rest of the party were already on their way to the couplers located just off the command deck. When they were nearly there, Gina stopped Hunt and turned to him with a puzzled expression.

“Vic, how is this supposed to work? There are two copies of each of us that have diverged and been leading independent existences for the last several hours. Does one of them get… ‘selected’ somehow, and the other one erased, like what happened to me before? If so, who chooses? I don’t think I like it.”

Hunt didn’t know. He hadn’t given it a thought. On reflection, he didn’t like it, either. How did he know that he would be the lucky one? But then, again, wouldn’t the other “him,” down in the Entoverse, have an equally valid reason for feeling the same way? So they put the question to VISAR.

“Why should you have to select either?” was VISAR’s reply.

Hunt didn’t understand. To him it still seemed a good question. “You say Eesyan’s already back on Thurien?” he said.

“Right.”

“So what did he do?”

“When I erased his surrogate in the Entoverse, I simply transferred its accumulated impressions into his original, physical self. It’s his brain, and now it contains his memories. Where’s the problem?”

Hunt glanced at Gina and shook his head, frowning. “You mean you just strung them together inside his head, serially? He remembers both sets of experiences equally vividly?” he said to VISAR.

“Yes.”

“But they were both happening at the same time,” Gina said.

“So what?”

Hunt and Gina looked at each other. VISAR was right. Evidently it was another Terran hang-up that Thuriens could live with and not worry about. It really didn’t matter, did it? They had already gotten used to some far stranger things.

“So what?” Hunt repeated.

Gina nodded and smiled at the impossibility of ever coming fully to terms with it all. “So what?”

They continued on into the corridor where the couplers were located.

In the forecourt of the Temple of Vandros, Hunt and his remaining companions prepared to depart in style, as emissaries from the gods would be expected to do. At the door of the Chinook, he paused to exchange a few parting words with Shingen-Hu.

“No more raisings until we’ve figured out on the outside how to handle it,” Hunt said. “We’ll be in touch, that’s a promise. In the meantime, make them believe that we haven’t abandoned them, and keep the faith.”

“It shall be as the new gods command,” Shingen-Hu assured him.

“And we don’t want sacrifices, killings, atonements, cleansings, or any more of that kind of thing. Try being nice to people for a change. Help them get what they want. You’d be amazed at the results.”

“The commandments will be obeyed.”

Remembering what had happened to the Jevlenese, Hunt waved at the machine, waiting with the others already aboard, its rotors idling. “This and the other miracles will cease. They don’t belong here. The people will have to learn to develop their own ways of solving their problems and catering to their needs, in ways that are natural to this place. In that way, they will develop also.”

“We shall await the Word.”

“And that’s about it.” Hunt extended a hand. Shingen-Hu looked at it, hesitated, and then returned the gesture. They shook firmly. Then Hunt climbed up and turned from the door for a last view. As the note of the turbines rose, Eubeleus ran forward from the knot of priests and notables standing ahead of the awestruck crowd.

“What’s this?” he screeched. “You’re not leaving me here? You can’t!”

“There isn’t a lot of choice,” Hunt called back. “You don’t seem to have grasped the point yet, Eubeleus, old chap. We have intact minds out there to return into. You don’t.”

And of course, Eubeleus hadn’t. He still thought that this was a software illusion manufatured by JEVEX, and had no idea how he had come to be part of it.

“Don’t worry too much about it for now,” Hunt shouted as the Chinook began to rise. “You should have plenty of time to figure it out.”

And as the crowd watched in silent reverence, the machine climbed away to hang over the city, its rotors flashing in the sunshine as a testament to the new, unimagined powers that had visited Waroth. The form froze into a white outline that persisted for a second longer… And then it was gone.