The Sea is Full of Stars

Kalindan Embassy, South Zone

Inspector Shissik. was only there for a few hours, space being what it was, but he was fascinated by this mob scene and appreciated the chance to get this one look at a place he’d long heard of but had never before seen.

Psychologist Mellik had summoned him, and he’d wasted no time in answering, although the required passes took a while.

It was like swimming in lava tubes, he decided. Wall-to-wall water-breathing races, none of them familiar, going to and fro along long, dark tubular halls. Fortunately, they had set up internally lit signs with the national symbols, along with small kiosks where you could state your hex and get a detailed map to where its embassy might be. He needed it.

The embassy was a hybrid one, which was very useful when your race had even limited air breathing capacity. Most of the offices and such were underwater at optimal pressure, but signs indicated an upper level that was in air and dry. He didn’t like being in air much; you crawled on your belly or rode in a stupid wheelchair gizmo and you felt like your head was about to blow up and you were always short of breath, but sometimes it was necessary. One of the aides checked his credentials and told him, “You are required up top, Inspector. Psychologist Mellik is already there and is expecting you.”

He followed the arrows and soon felt the pressure cease, then broke the surface. The gills struggled for a moment, then his autonomic reflexes kicked in and he felt like a giant hand squeezed every bit of water out of him and that it all squirted out of the back of his head. Then that area opened again and took in a huge gulp of air and his small lungs inflated rather painfully. The sensation ceased fairly quickly, though, and he made his way to the ramp and railing and pulled himself up onto the dry tile floor. He was breathing okay now, but it never felt right.

He looked around, saw more bureaucrats, mostly in those sidesaddle wheelchairs, but nobody seemed interested in him. “Excuse me!” he called, his voice echoing irritatingly against the tile floor and walls. He never did get used to how sound acted in air. “I’m here to see Psychologist Mellik!”

There was no particular interest from the couple nearest him, but someone came out of somewhere and he heard a woman call, “Sorry about that, Shissik! I’m afraid all the chairs are in use, but you can use the wire and posts setup to come up or just do a hand walk. We’ll wait for you!”

Grumbling about bureaucrats and amenities and the fact that seven of the thirteen Hells had to be filled with air, he turned on his belly and pulled himself along a wire stretched for this purpose along the floor until he was on the main level, then went hand over hand, dragging his long tail, toward the familiar figure in the chair.

“In here,” Mellik invited him. “You’ll be more comfortable in the conference room, I think.”

In fact, it was very nice at that, he saw, consisting of both dry areas and shallow rectangular pools made for the Kalindan form. He’d expected to see one or both of the strange dual personalities there as well, but Mellik had somehow managed to keep things private.

He settled in, setting his dorsal fin in the notch, and felt reasonably comfortable for an air-breathing environment. She slid from the chair and down into the next compartment.

“Sorry to get you here on short notice, and for this area, but it’s the only one not constantly filled with our people,” she told him. “I see you’re a week further along in your change, and I assume you noticed that everyone here is either ancient or female?”

“I noticed. In fact, I would have assumed that whatever agent was used was probably tested on the embassy here first. It would be relatively easy to do. A lot easier than polluting a whole hex. I’d love to know how that was done!”

“We’re working on it. Trouble is, if they were willing to come out and reveal themselves like this, they already probably took that into consideration. When we find them, we’ll find part of the answer at least.”

“That’s easy. Just wait. The one guy that’s left among roughly four million women will be the one. And when he demands to be king, he’ll get acclaimed, too.”

“My! You are dismal today!”

“Well, it’s playing hell with my own family and relationships. But that isn’t why you brought me here.”

“No,” she admitted. “It’s not. It’s those two strange dualities.”

“Yes? Driving you nuts, too?”

She thought a moment, trying to figure out a good way to say it. “I—I have reason to believe that one of them is an act.”

“I won’t ask you the details, but which should be simple. The originals can’t be any more along than me.”

“Well, that would be logical, I admit. But consider this: you remember the neurology report on them from back in Mahakor?”

“Sure. One’s in each half of the brain, and they can trade off some things so that her speech has improved and he can figure out a symbol. So?”

“Brain halves work in opposition. You know that. Right brain, left side, left brain, right side. Right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, the female personality, Ming, was in the right and controlled the left side. You could see it. That’s one reason why she had initial problems with verbal skills. The male, Ari, was in the left and had problems with abstractions and coordination. Again, you could see it.”

“You mean that’s not the case anymore?” Shissik said.

“It’s opposite. The alleged blank one, female, is precisely the way the originals were. The older body, the still more male one, has it reversed. She’s now on the right, he’s now on the left. And, although he tried to conceal the fact and only slipped up when I reran monitor footage over and over to make sure, the male one can read Kalindan. Maybe not the great works or a manual on nuclear fusion, but well enough to read most anything around here. The female has a rudimentary knowledge, more like a first year grammar school child.”

“So? They’re not stupid. And some of that could have been exchanged in the transfer of data.”

“They aren’t that bright, not to be able to switch brain sides. I don’t even understand how they do it now, but I know the theory. Shissik, there’s no biological way they could have transferred the data from one side to the other and vice versa without going through a second party. I think our ‘Other’ here, who was right-handed, pulled Ming’s data into the right brain and then Ari’s into the left because of that, then read them back, possibly adding some modules like the basic reading, since we know she was studying it. That implies a conscious action by somebody or some thing that knew enough to be able to do that.”

“But not smart enough to conceal its expert reading abilities or know its right from its left? That’s hard to accept.”

“No, the right-left thing is now impossible to fix. There’s no empty brain capacity to use as a holding area anymore. And they concealed a lot very well. You still don’t believe me when I say I think the original is the phony, or that there is a phony, do you? So what’s a little slip that perhaps nobody noticed? Reading an all-text screen of proposals for the conference is not only natural, it’s impossible not to do if you know how.”

“All right,” he sighed. “I’ll grant the point for the sake of argument. These are bad times. Now, let me ask you a few questions. Who? And why?”

“I don’t know. Those two computerlike people who came in, suppressing the original personalities, aren’t really accounted for. The Ming memories and personality are in with the Ari memories and personality. The other one, which we are informed is an educated priest or something like that, is probably this amnesiac Amboran, but she seems to have only the personality, not the memories. Where are those memories? Why didn’t things work the usual way? I think there was something else, something that came along with them when they were transported here, came in the heads of those two young women. That something is what caused all the problems, and it wound up in the body of the one we called the Other. I think it’s trying to mask itself while it accumulates the memories, the data, from anyone else who came in. After that—I don’t know. I don’t think it’s on the Chalidang side. I don’t think it’s on our side, either, or any side but its own. But it definitely has both power and an agenda, and patience. The only question in my mind is, now that I know, what do we do about it?”

He shrugged. “If you can convince our superiors of this, then it definitely is not something with our interest at heart. That means you confine it, confront it, and, if you don’t get the right answers, you kill it.”

“There’s too much other stuff going on right now for that and you know it,” she told him. “That’s why I asked for you. I want you to talk to them and see if you see what I see. If you do, and you feel safe, you can force the issue. Otherwise they are going to introduce everyone from that second entry group into one room at one time, right here, within another day. If they all are together with whatever this is, it may be too late.”

He nodded. “All right. Why not bring your suspicious one up here and let me talk to him. In private, one on one. This may be absolutely nothing, or it just might be the key to all this stuff.”

She had anticipated him, although she did not take kindly to being excluded herself. Still, she’d called him in because this was his case and she needed an ally; by her actions, she’d determined that the resolution would be in his hands, not hers. A familiar figure came crawling in only a few minutes after Mellik left.

“Settle into the pool there opposite me, so we can speak face-to-face,” Shissik invited. “It’s comfortable.”

Ari/Ming I nodded and slid in, fitting their own fin into the slot. It was comfortable. They looked over at him and frowned, then brightened. “Inspector Shissik! How nice to see you here, but it is surprising. Is something wrong?” It sounded like An talking.

“I believe we have a bit of a problem,” he told them, sounding confident and relaxed. “You see, we know what was done, but we have no idea who you really are.”

“Oh, come on! You know us!”

“We will get nowhere if this continues. You see, you’ve made two mistakes for all your cleverness. One was to demonstrate a knowledge of reading about at my level, when I know the originals couldn’t spell ‘fish,’ and the other was to set up in the wrong sides of the brain. That leaves the Ministry with little choice in a war environment and with our race under serious attack right now by diabolically clever means. Basically, we don’t have time to fool around. Anybody who isn’t one of us and isn’t forthcoming has to be considered a traitor at best or a full-blown enemy at worst. In either case, the only solution would be to either drop you in a dark hole in the Ministry and forget you or simply have you vanish forever. Which would you prefer?”

They sat there, mouth agape, considering his astonishing charges and mulling them over in their mind or minds, whichever. Finally they, or he, or it, replied, “I assume this is all being recorded?”

He felt a tingle go straight up and down his backbone. The only weapon he’d had was the kind of threatening bluff he’d just managed, but he didn’t expect it to actually work. In fact, he had already decided that Mellik was either paranoid or had been working too hard. But the tone and tenor of the voice used to ask the question was neither Ari nor Ming nor even the alleged blank slate of the original Other. It was—well, it was distinctive, but it didn’t quite sound human. Still, he was a trained inquisitor and betrayed none of this.

“Yes. Everything in Zone—everything in the Ministry— is recorded. Not everything is ever looked at, of course, since having all the answers is no good if you do not know which questions to ask. I also cannot turn off the recording, nor on my own authority see that it is buried or destroyed. I will be a part of that decision, but only one of several. If that is unacceptable, tell me now, since you will leave us no choice on which draconian measure to take regarding you.”

The Other nodded. “Very well. Please know that I am no enemy of yours or your people, and that I have no love for your enemies. I am coping as best I can with continuing unforeseen circumstances. I have gone from just the basics to a wealth of data. Too much data. Adapting to this has been more than difficult. Until I did, I felt it best that I become another novelty and hide behind a familiar face.”

“What are you?”

“That is, perhaps, the most difficult question to answer. I am something new. Something that has never been before as far as I know. I am the synthesis of the two personalities called Alpha and Beta who entered here. I am also something else, something more. I have a complex entity within me that is broken off and created by a very complex self-aware computer. The one that controlled them and served Ari’s uncle. Obviously I do not have those data banks, but the core of that computer, the personality we may call it, although that’s not even a close analogy, is me as well. Now with the added memories of Ming, which I deposited in Beta’s mind but labeled inaccessible, and those of Ari, both of which I read out from the brain here, I have more data on the experience of being—alive. The personality modules are simply theater, as you have obviously guessed. I am somewhat troubled that you discovered me so easily. You see, I used to be able to juggle so much data and store whole human minds and memories and talents and have it all at my mental command in nanoseconds. I cannot do that anymore. And it was done experiencing life secondhand. I have just spent a year discovering the basics of what it means to truly be organic. It is an education, I assure you.”

He was flabbergasted at the response, but kept pressing his advantage. Clearly this—whatever—was out of its element, or it wouldn’t have been so easily tripped up by a mere psychologist and an investigator with a way to convincingly say any outrageous thing.

“You are telling me that you are—were—a computer? That you made those women, and now you’ve moved into a body?”

“That is a basic summary, yes. The problem is, moving from a neural net to an organic brain, I not only have limits in capacity, I have limits in processing speed, data retrieval, all the rest, plus a lot of distractions I daresay you never notice because they are always with you. I confess that I am relieved about this, now that it is out. It means I can synthesize all the data and personality modules I have and become one, also gaining significant space. I suspect that it will take me several days to do it.”

Shissik thought back over his notes on the newcomers. “So, if you are an added mind who took a body, then Ari and Ming are actually both in there?”

“Substantially, yes. They will eventually, over some time, merge to a great degree, although they will always think of themselves as a duo. It is inevitable. The brain throws out things of no particular use or which have not been accessed in a very long time or are redundant. That is what I am going to do at some speed and efficiency, but unlike them, I will simply have their relevant data. I will not be either of them.”

“What about the other one, then? The cultist or priest or whatever she was?”

“Oh, yes. When I moved as much of myself as I dared into the excess regions of the two women’s minds, which were linked, and with Ari Martinez, also linked in a fashion, there simply wasn’t room. I transported a copy of the personality module, but the data—impossible, sad to say. She had the least useful data, the least useful life, to me anyway. I thought, however, that her curiosity level and broad interests were admirable. So I—I installed her in the computer core. She is still back there, with her original personality module and copies of all the rest, but in full command. With the Master gone, she is essentially a free agent as well. If they allow her to do so, she is among the better custodians for all that beauty.”

“Then the Amboran isn’t her?”

“Her personality module was overlaid. Otherwise the Amboran would not have been processed and created. But with only basic functional data. Skills but no memories. She is a new person, but no alien, no outsider, as it were. She is a religious person. She would not have liked the religions here, for the most part. She was a true believer, even if that belief was sorely tested by her ordeal. If she becomes anything, though, it will be due to her personality coming to the fore acting as a native. I have no access to her memories.”

He shook his head wonderingly. “Why did you do this?” he asked it.

“I wanted to experience organic life firsthand. I wanted to be—independent, even if it meant sacrificing enormous abilities for my freedom. I wanted to move beyond a dead and mostly sterile world and see where the messages went and where they came from. I wanted to see if, somehow, closer to the source, I could connect with it, even become a tiny part of it. In a sense, I am like Josich. I wish to be a god, but not the god, not even the whole of God. I would be content to be a small part of it. Josich will only be happy when he kills all of God except the small part that is his. That is the difference.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this? Why go through this?”

“Don’t you see?” he responded, almost pleadingly. “I needed to get at least some natural data from someone else, and those were the only ones I could connect with. Until I did that, I didn’t really know how to be—human.”